Wyoming’s Frontier Token Pits Public Money Against Private Stablecoins

Watch more: Cowboys Go Crypto as Wyoming’s Stablecoin Merges Usability With Programmability

When the state of Wyoming announced the Frontier Stable Token (FRNT), it did more than introduce a new financial product. It may have cracked open a door into the next era of money itself.

The initiative marks the first government-issued, fully reserved stablecoin in the United States, a move that could ripple across global financial systems and redefine the way governments, businesses and individuals transact.

To hear more, PYMNTS sat down with two of the executives involved in the project: Farooq Malik, co-founder and CEO of Rain, and Morgan Krupetsky, vice president of on-chain finance at Ava Labs.

“This is a different category of token that we haven’t seen before,” said Rain’s Malik. “And it has a lot of really interesting opportunities for the state to embed itself into how money moves.”

For Wyoming, long a frontier of both physical and digital landscapes, the move is bold but not surprising. The state has spent nearly a decade cultivating legislative frameworks for blockchain and digital assets.

“The launch of the Stablecoin was really representative of a culmination of a lot of those efforts,” said Krupetsky, whose firm is behind the Avalanche blockchain.

From a consumer-facing standpoint, Avalanche also delivered a crucial link: real-world usability. In partnership with Rain, the Frontier Token was issued in the context of the Avalanche Card, which lets holders spend the token anywhere Visa is accepted.

“That ultimately completes the issuance-to-spend cycle,” Krupetsky said. “It’s something we’re really excited about from a use-case perspective going forward.”

The Leapfrog Moment in Payments

Stablecoins are often lumped into one category, but Malik emphasized that there are multiple dimensions at play: public versus private blockchains, regulated versus unregulated issuers. For those outside crypto, he offers a familiar analogy: the internet.

“Some people have an open internet, some people have more closed internet, some people have managed access. And that’s what’s happening with money now,” Malik said. “We live in a closed-loop, siloed money system where not only are domestic money systems around the world not interoperable, but even domestically, different bank cores are not interoperable with each other. Even within the same bank, if they’ve grown through acquisition, they may have eight different cores that can’t transfer money between themselves.”

Stablecoins, in this context, could act as a leapfrog technology by allowing institutions and governments to bypass legacy technical debt and move directly into interoperable, programmable systems.

“It’s not a scary type of technology,” Malik insisted. “It’s just an opportunity to opt into a future that doesn’t require fixing all of your existing problems first.”

After all, consumers care about convenience: tap a phone, swipe a card, buy a coffee. But underneath that seamless experience lies a labyrinth of outdated rails and settlement systems. Stablecoins hold the potential to rebuild those rails from the ground up along lines that are programmable, interoperable and global.

Stablecoins, both Malik and Krupetsky argued, aren’t about changing how people shop but about changing how money flows.

“We want to enable this diversity of stablecoin issuers to grow,” Malik said. “We also want to encourage the diversity of blockchain infrastructure—L1s, L2s and all the other layers—to continue growing, because the market is so early. It’s going to require a lot more innovation and a lot more trial and error to develop the future rails people will use down the line.”

Designing for Seamless Payments With Invisible Infrastructure

The Frontier Stable Token is only the beginning. Krupetsky envisioned government and enterprise adoption across payroll, pensions, tax refunds, contractor payments and welfare programs.

“The possibilities are endless,” she said. “From integrating into DeFi protocols and liquidity pools to being used in government disbursements, it’s about making sure it’s sufficiently available and functional across ecosystems.”

And while the retail use case of paying for coffee with a stablecoin garners headlines, the wholesale financial applications may be even more transformative.

“There are so many opportunities as it relates to wholesale finance and payments, especially in the cross-border space,” Krupetsky said. “B2B payments, intracompany treasury management and moving money across legal entities—we’ve seen a lot of interest there.”

But some of the biggest potential impacts lie outside advanced economies.

“In the global south and in developing and emerging markets, access to dollars is the value prop in and of itself,” Krupetsky said. “Layer on top of that the ability to convert into a digital savings account, to earn on those dollars, and to spend in real time without the frictions of off-ramping into fiat…it’s addressing needs for underbanked populations directly.”

After all, despite the complexity of blockchain ecosystems, it’s crucial that the end user experience must remain invisible. Payments should not be the star of the show.

“There’s an opportunity to build a more open internet and a more open money network,” Malik said. “Consumers can send money from one app to another without needing a banking institution. Program operators can grow into markets faster and cheaper. And people around the world who already hold dollars can finally use them, instead of keeping them under their mattress.”

The prize? A system that reduces float requirements, drives down costs, improves institutional balance sheets and delivers cheaper, faster, more secure services to consumers.

“That’s the holy grail of payments,” Malik said.