Wyoming Lawmakers Pass Three Bills in Boost for State's Crypto Industry

The U.S. state of Wyoming has passed several bills aimed to make the state a top destination for cryptocurrency and blockchain businesses.

Bill SF0125 last week, which recognizes digital assets as property and clears the way for banks to act as crypto custodians.

The bill defines a digital asset as "a representation of economic, proprietary or access rights that is stored in a computer readable format, and includes digital consumer assets, digital securities and virtual currency."

Once the bill is approved and signed by the state Governor Mark Gordon, it will officially become law effective July 1, and would classify digital assets as property within the Uniform Commercial Code.

Caitlin Long, co-founder of the Wyoming Blockchain Coalition, told CoinDesk at the time that the bill is a big step forward for the state, and could prove a boon for crypto startups and users alike.

Wyoming House of Representatives also passed two other major bills on cryptocurrency regulation last Friday - House Bill 0074 and HB0185.

The passing of all these bills "Surpasses anything we did last year," adds Lindholm.

"There's going to be an influx of a financial services industry to the state of Wyoming, both from the special purpose depository institutions that we talked about today - these are the non-FDIC insured banks - as well as separately there's going to be digital asset custodians coming into the state of Wyoming."

All three bills are currently awaiting signature by the state governor.

"I think right now Wyoming is the standard. We've got other states running in one form or another our legislation so they're trying to play catch-up. The unfortunate part of that is we passed the bills this year too, so that puts us out a little bit farther out front," boasted Lindholm.