The state of Wyoming got its first crypto trust firm called SFOX as it landed permission to start its operations, paving way for more institutions to engage with the $2 trillion markets. Recently SFOX in an interview revealed that the Wyoming Division of Banking approved its trust charter application in October, a process that took 10 months.
According to sources, the approval is part of a wider effort by Wyoming to attract crypto-focused businesses and individuals to the state by providing legal clarity. Laws passed in the state since 2018 include the exemption of digital assets from property and sales taxes.
The chartered trust is slated to operate as the SAFE Trust Company Inc.
SFOX, which mainly focuses on hedge funds and institutional clients, runs a digital asset platform that aggregates liquidity from more than 30 exchanges and over-the-counter desks. It has access to Bitcoin, Ether, Solana, and other crypto markets. Akbar Thobhani, co-founder and CEO of SFOX’s SAFE Trust entity, stated,
“Wyoming’s trust charter overall marks ‘a big step’ for the crypto industry in part as it enables individual retirement accounts, companies offering IRA services, hedge funds, and other institutions access to the blockchain and digital-asset market.”
In addition to that, the charter also claims to allow to offer a range of “unique instruments” to its customers, from staking to lending and borrowing. Its platform promises to facilitate the custody of hundreds of digital assets and NFTs. The latest Wyoming license will help allow the firm to introduce ideas such as staking to clients.
Crypto making quick inroads in the Cowboy state
According to findings last year by analytics company Blockdata, Banks, for one, have been heavily investing in the area of crypto custody. Companies selling custodial services look after their clients’ digital assets for a fee. In fact, trading platform Kraken in 2020 became the first crypto firm to gain approval for a bank charter under Wyoming’s establishment of a special purpose depository institution charter in 2019.
In January Wyoming bitcoin proponent Senator Cynthia Lummis asked the Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell for support from the Fed in approving crypto banks in her home state. On Feb 17, 2022, lawmakers proposed the Wyoming Stable Token Act [SF0106], enabling the crypto-friendly state to launch its own dollar-pegged token.