Why can’t Scotland be more like enterprising Wyoming?
Wyoming is developing cryptocurrency industry in a way that Scotland could emulate, writes Jim Duffy
What do Wyoming and Scotland have in common? Answer: they both are great places for tourism. But, what differentiates Wyoming from Scotland? Answer: Wyoming is decades ahead in terms of global ambition. Let’s explore...
Wyoming is a big chunk of landlocked land in the heart of the USA. It is rich in history, natural wonders and the Old West. It has famous National Parks, towering rugged mountain ranges, wild rivers and of course wide open plains. Tourists travel both from within America and outwith the USA to enjoy the landscape and the recreational activities on offer. The good folks of Wyoming still wear cowboy hats. At the least men do. They love their history, culture and the more relaxed way of life and living that Wyoming offers compared to the likes of New York City. Kind of feels a wee bit like Scotland when juxtaposed to the the rest of the UK. But, that is where it ends.
Wyoming has bags of ambition. It has oodles and oodles of energy, passion and excitement for what the future could bring. It wants to punch above its weight and create new forms of “special” in this thriving state. And only this week, its world-beating plans have come to fruition. Little ol’ Wyoming is going to be the beating heart of finance and cryptocurrency in the USA as the mighty Kraken cryptocurrency exchange is opening its first bank there.
I’ve been banging on about cryptocurrency for a while now. Cryptographic projects and protocols have the capacity and potential to completely change our lives for the better. They are not simply start-ups or businesses that offer “insane gains” as the Twitter brigade would say. They are real-life projects that have big ambitions of how humanity can move into the next stage of the internet and our day-to-day functionality. Let me give you an example.
Cardano is one of the most exciting and rigorous projects that is being built right now. In short, the team at Cardano want to create the global infrastructure for a new secure, innovative and scalable financial system. It can do away with oldstyle banking, currency exchanges, driving licences, passwords, voting systems, application forms and a whole lot more. Essentially your meta-data or everything about you will be stored as “you” on a blockchain, so it cannot be tampered with or altered. You want to hire a car? The car hire firm takes your ID and it has everything verified instantly and you can even pay for the car hire without credit cards etc. This technology is Star Wars on steroids. And it coming in the next decade.
So, cryptographic projects are here right now. And Wyoming knows it. The state forecast this and did something about it. A bunch of folks got the legislature, governor, banks, businesses, universities and more into a room and around a table. That was the easy bit. After that they had to re-engineer how Wyoming could change its laws and still be legal within a federal frame - work. Everyone had to be on board in a transparent way. Forget multimillionaires opening banks on their own or others making sure their positions were advanced – a big problem in Scotland. It was Wyoming first and ego and power trips second. And look at it now.
The university is a global blockchain powerhouse, it has now partnered with Kraken to create a major US banking and cryptocurrency financial centre and it will bring in jobs, jobs, jobs. Not just for develop - ers in tech. Home building, infra