Wyoming has been the least populated state in the country for decades -- 588,753 residents in the latest Census estimate -- governed by a 90-member legislature that is explicitly part-time, with no personal staff and no district offices. That same body has passed more than 20 blockchain and digital-asset laws since 2018, more than any other state or the U.S. Congress. The push had a specific author: Caitlin Long, a University of Wyoming graduate who spent 22 years on Wall Street (Salomon Brothers, Credit Suisse, running Morgan Stanley's pension business) before winning a Wyoming legislative seat in 2018 and writing the laws herself. The state had its own reason to listen -- coal severance tax revenue had already fallen from more than $290 million a year in 2011-2012 to $172 million by 2022, on a trajectory toward $114 million by 2028. Wyoming created the Special Purpose Depository Institution charter in 2019; Kraken Bank became the first SPDI in September 2020, Long's own Avanti Bank & Trust (later renamed Custodia Bank) the second a month later. But a state charter can't force federal cooperation: Custodia sued the Federal Reserve for a master account in 2022, lost at the district court in 2024, and lost a full Tenth Circuit rehearing in April 2026, ending a five-year fight one dissenting judge called "akin to a death sentence" for a bank built this way. Meanwhile, in a completely unrelated corner of the same state, Wyoming's zero-income-tax structure is paying off spectacularly: Teton County (Jackson Hole) posted the highest per-capita income of any US county in 2024, over seven times the average of Wyoming's other 22 counties.