Wyoming ranch owner Charles Hoskinson, who also is the founder of the Cardano cryptocurrency platform, has taken to social media to blast Wyoming’s process of creating its own stable token, saying that it hasn’t been transparent and unfairly excluded his company.

The criticism follows an announcement from the Wyoming Stable Token Commission announcing that it has begun taking requests for proposals from pre-qualified vendors, which it identified as Solana, Avalanche, Sui, Stellar and Ethereum. The latter includes a bullet point that it is “inclusive of layer-2 networks Polygon, Arbitrum, Base and Optimism.”

None of the other platforms include any explanatory bullet points.

Wyoming Stable Token Executive Director Anthony Apollo also said in the announcement that those are the networks the state’s Blockchain Selection Working Proup has determined to be “in-scope” for the initial deployment of Wyoming’s stable token. Stable tokens are a type of cryptocurrency where the goal is to hold a static value. In Wyoming’s case, a single stable token would be worth $1.

Apollo said his office is working on an official statement about the stable token flap with Cardano and declined an interview with Cowboy State Daily about it.

Hoskinson told Cowboy State Daily he feels blindsided by the commission’s announcement. He said it’s unfair for the state to make such a selection without having first publicly listed what the qualifications would be, giving the 30,000 or so blockchains, including his own, a fair opportunity to decide if they can meet those qualifications within the state’s timeframe.

As a consequence, Hoskinson said, the “largest Wyoming-based blockchain company in the world, with hundreds of employees in Wyoming, can’t even bid on the RFP at this point.”

Instead, Cardano added, “companies in California, New York and in Singapore — financial institutions outside of Wyoming, with no connection to Wyoming — are going to be involved in implementing the Wyoming stable coin. That’s what happened.”

Black Eye On State’s Fairness

In a video he posted to X (formerly Twitter) on Monday, Hoskinson said he had advocated very strongly that all the functional and non-functional requirements be published by the commission so that any cryptocurrency platform that wanted to vie for development of the stable token could build a prototype demonstrating whether their ecosystem could support Wyoming’s requirements.

“Initially, this appeared to be the direction that the commission was pushing,” Hoskinson said. “And then, suddenly, the executive director and commission just decided to create their own criteria and act as judge, jury and executioner in a very short period of time … to score blockchains themselves.”

Hoskinson suggested that Apollo, who is a former employee of Consensus, which developed Ethereum, has been biased against other platforms from the start, adding that the director had even mentioned during one of his first meetings that it was his belief the stable token should just be built on Ethereum first.

That was something Hoskinson immediately pushed back on.

“I mean, they passed 31 cryptocurrency laws, and none of them said, ‘Hey, bitcoin’s great, but Ethereum is bad or Ethereum is great,” he said. “They said these are the rules and as long as you follow them, you have clear rule of law and regulation, which is why so many cryptocurrency companies relocated to Wyoming, mine included. Because we believed everybody would be treated equally.”

The decision to exclude so many blockchains and ecosystems in what Hoskinson characterized as an arbitrary way is a “black eye” on the state’s fairness, he said.

“There was no real opportunity for public comment,” he said. “There was no opportunity for appeals or rebuttal. After picking a short list, Cardano was excluded, saying that we didn’t have certain capabilities — which we actually do — although we were never told that these capabilities would be necessary, so we had no opportunity to prepare a prototype.”

‘Fair, Open And Public’

Senator Chris Rothfuss, who was instrumental in developing Wyoming’s digital asset laws, including the Wyoming Stable Token, told Cowboy State Daily he believes the process was fair.

“It was designed to be fair, open and public, with a clear set of criteria established by subject matter experts to evaluate candidate blockchains for issuing WYST,” he said.

That criteria list included a requirement for “freeze and seize.” The phrase seems to refer to the seizure of a questionable cryptocurrency asset, a capability that would likely be required by the Securities and Exchange Commission during an investigation, to forestall any money laundering.

That’s a capability that Cardano does not yet have, Cowboy State Daily was told, but could have been working on in anticipation of the need, if the state had been transparent about releasing its criteria to the public.

Rothfuss, however, also suggested that the selection process isn’t necessarily finished at this point.

“This process is dynamic,” he said. “And pre-qualified blockchains will evolve as their capabilities evolve. For example, I anticipate that Midnight, a layer 2 network for Cardano currently in a test state, will be prequalified once its capabilities are ready.”

Rothfuss added that feedback and corrections are also welcomed. 

“The Cardano community is encouraged to provide updated information if any assumptions in the evaluation were inaccurate,” Rothfuss said. “Wyoming remains committed to a technology-neutral approach, ensuring WYST operates across multiple blockchains to support our broader goals of innovation and compliance.”

Who Is Hoskinson And What Is Cardano

Cardano has long been a heavy-hitter in the cryptocurrency sphere, with a blockchain that is capable of processing a million transactions in a second.

The platform was created by Hoskinson in 2017 as his idea for the next logical evolution of Ethereum, and is billed by the Ethereum cofounder as the “third generation” for cryptocurrency platforms, with bitcoin the first, Ethereum second, and Cardano the third.

“My company, Input Output, is one of the companies that created Cardano, and it is worth, it trades $34 billion in dollars every single day,” Hoskinson said. “I also have hundreds of employees based in Gillette for other business ventures, like I own a large healthcare clinic up there. We have 10,000 patients with Hoskinson Health.”

Hoskinson’s company also has a digital assets laboratory, where it works with the University of Wyoming in developing this sector.

“It’s by far the largest blockchain project that has a — it’s the only blockchain project in the top 10 — that has a nexus in Wyoming,” Hoskinson said.

Cardano began allowing the creation of native tokens like NFTs or stable coins starting in 2021, but unlike Ethereum, Cardano doesn’t restrict such tokens to smart contracts. Instead, they run on the same platform as the platform’s cryptocurrency unit, ADA, making them what Cardano describes on its website as “first-class” citizens on the blockchain.

Cardano said it believes that makes the tokens more secure, and that it will reduce the fees associated with such transactions.

Cardano’s process also uses a different mechanism to validate blockchain transactions, one that’s less energy intense.

A Stable Token For A Dollar

Hoskinson was among vocal supporters of the Wyoming Stable Token when it was unveiled a year and a half ago, and he even offered at one point to build the state’s stable token for a dollar.

“It’s not about making money,” he said. “I just care about making sure it’s done right. If Wyoming is going to do this, it has to be done in a way that benefits the state.”

Hoskinson said he’s attended many meetings over the past year and a half and reviewed hundreds of documents related to the stable token..

“What’s happened over time is that the process went from open to more and more secretive,” he said. “Where certain subcommittees were closed and people weren’t really sharing information with people. It went from, ‘Hey, this is going tot be an open RFP process and open RFQ process, and the merit-based qualifications will come in’ to ‘we’re going to go ahead and the state will just arbitrarily select according to our own criteria, with no oversight, winners and losers.’”

The exclusion of not just Cardano, but bitcoin and the thousands of other blockchains in this manner is a head-scratcher, Hoskinson said.

“Bitcoin is larger than all the other cryptocurrencies combined, and Trump wants to do a strategic reserve, and Senator (Cynthia) Lummis is a huge fan of Bitcoin,” Hoskinson said, adding that, “It’s extraordinary to me” that Bitcoin would be excluded.

Hoskinson said he still believes in Wyoming and that things will get “remedied” in time.

“I don’t know why they made these decisions,” he said. “They were done in a very opaque and not so transparent way, but we’re just gonna move forward. I believe in this state, I live in this state, I employ hundreds of people in the state and put hundreds of millions of dollars into the state. I’m going to continue doing that because I live here.”

Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.

A classic Edwardian home in San Francisco‘s Russian Hill with timeless character has been snapped up for $488,000 by a savvy homebuyer.

The unusually low price is far less than half of the city’s $1.2 million median list price and an even smaller portion of the property’s estimated $1.4 million value.

Though the home might seem like a dream bargain at first glance, it comes with a rather astonishing catch: The new owner may not move into the property for the next 30 years.

According to the listing, the property is currently tenant-occupied under San Francisco’s tenant protection laws, and the current lucky occupant, who pays an incredibly low monthly rent of $417, signed a lease that locked in strict rent controls and grants occupancy rights extending until 2053.

These laws are designed to protect long-term renters, securing low costs over a years long period and enabling the current tenant to take full control over payments of all utilities, including water, garbage, and energy bills.

There’s no wiggle room either. The sale was strictly as is, according to the listing, which also noted that agents were unable to guarantee access to the property for an inspection or even a walk-through before purchase.

The seller also had the right to reject or counter any offers.

Perhaps understandably, given the legal complexities that come with the home, any potential buyers were urged to review the full disclosure package and consult with an attorney before committing to purchasing the house.

And that’s not the only “catch” to have come with the property.

Per the listing, the former male owner of the house died inside it. He was over the age of 100 and died of natural causes.

When the home was first listed, it sparked a frenzy of excitement and intrigue.

One neighbor at the time, Ilia Smith, told ABC News that there was a line of people wrapped around the block waiting for a chance to peek inside the unique home.

“My husband came in and said, ‘You’ve got to look out the window. There’s a line from the house all the way to the middle of the block,’” she said.

Ultimately, it was revealed that the home had been the subject of a bitter family feud, according to the San Francisco Standard, which reported that the home was listed by Todd Lee, who is the son of the current tenant, Sandra Lee.

According to the Standard, the property was purchased by Sandra’s parents, Florence and Kenneth Goo, in the 1970s. The Goos lived there for many years until they both died in the home, in 2006 and 2018, respectively.

Sandra, who has been living in the home since 2018, told the Standard that the property had been listed by her son without her permission. He was unaware of the iron-clad lease clauses that Kenneth had secretly written into her rental agreement before his death, she added.

“If it wasn’t for the lease that [my son] didn’t know about that was made in 2018, I don’t know where we’d be,” she told the publication. “It’s unfathomable, the deception, the betrayal—this is my son doing this to me.”

Property records indicate that the home was actually purchased by Sandra’s daughter, Cheryl Lee, suggesting that the family rift has since been put aside and that the new owner will not have to worry about dealing with the difficulties of having a stranger occupying their home for the next three decades.

At the time of the home’s original listing, experts at local company Kinoko Real Estate explained the complexities of buying this kind of property. There are a few upsides to purchasing a dwelling that already has a long-term tenant installed, they noted.

“Real estate investors might be intrigued by the long-term investment opportunity,” the company’s website said. “The guaranteed rental income for nearly three decades is attractive, especially considering San Francisco’s historically rising rents.”

However, according to Kinoko, the downsides are much more obvious.

“While the long-term rental income might be enticing, there are some significant drawbacks to consider,” the website goes on. “Firstly, the buyer has no control over the property for nearly three decades. Major repairs or renovations would be at the mercy of the tenant’s cooperation.

“Additionally, predicting the housing market in 2053 is a fool’s errand. There’s no guarantee the property will appreciate in value as much as hoped, especially considering the long wait time.”

On Monday, fan voting opened up for the 2025 NFL Pro Bowl Games. Fans are now able to vote online, with social media voting to start December 9.

The Pro Bowl Games replaced the original Pro Bowl, in which players demonstrate skills and take part in flag football, as opposed to a regular football game as in years past. But as with past seasons, the rosters will be determined by a combination of player, head coach and fan votes.

Regardless of what one thinks about the importance of the Pro Bowl, the Denver Broncos have multiple players who have cases to make the AFC roster. Let’s take a look at those players in order of the likelihood who could make the final roster.

The Broncos’ No. 1 cornerback should have no problem making the cut. PS2 continues to play at a high level, with three interceptions on the year, along with consistent play in containing or shutting down the top wide receiver he faces.

Surtain is a top contender for Defensive Player of the Year and should now be recognized throughout the league as one of the best cornerbacks in the NFL, if not the best corner, period.

Meinerz has established himself as one of the better offensive guards in the NFL. In 10 games, the fourth-year player has allowed just one sack (not including Week 12) and committed just one holding penalty while becoming arguably the best player on a quality offensive line.

Meinerz hasn’t received much recognition outside of Denver for his first three seasons, even after a strong 2023 season. However, more people should be aware of his play now and that should translate to a bigger push for him to get his first Pro Bowl nod.

After a quiet rookie season in 2022, which was followed by mostly coming off the bench in 2023, Bonitto is having a breakout season. He currently ranks third in the NFL with 10 sacks, tied with Myles Garrett and trailing Trey Hendrickson and Danielle Hunter.

To be up there with elite players like Hendrickson, Hunter and Garrett says a lot about Bonitto’s play. It should hopefully be enough for Bonitto to overcome what might be a lack of name recognition and get his first Pro Bowl selection.

Bolles is another reason why the Broncos offensive line has played so well. Two seasons removed from a broken leg, Bolles is having one of his best seasons as a pro.

Not including Week 12, Bolles has allowed just one sack this season. He has been called for 10 penalties, which might not help his case, but his overall play could be enough to get his second Pro Bowl berth.

Nix is not just in the conversation for Offensive Rookie of the Year — he’s building himself a case for the Pro Bowl. A ratio of 16 touchdowns to six interceptions should certainly help his cause, plus five more scores (four rushing/one receiving).

However, Nix has two MVP candidates to deal with in the AFC: Josh Allen and Lamar Jackson. Also, Joe Burrow has thrown 27 touchdowns with just four picks, despite the Bengals’ losing record. Still, Nix could be in line for first alternate if he keeps playing well.

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Allen continues to be a consistent playmaker for the Broncos. He has five sacks with 21 quarterback hits and 28 pressures in 11 games.

Allen’s problem is there are quite a few defensive linemen playing well in the AFC. He’s had a Pro Bowl-worthy season, but he’ll have to beat out some other worthy players.

Jones had a tough task in replacing fan favorite and previous Pro Bowl selection Justin Simmons. However, Jones has risen to the occasion, with two interceptions and multiple pass breakups.

The issue with Jones may be name recognition. Other safeties tend to dominate the conversation more and will probably get the nod. But Jones has a case to be the latest Broncos safety to make the Pro Bowl.

Sutton has 57 receptions for 744 yards and five touchdowns in 12 games. While those numbers may not stand out in the NFL as a whole, he ranks high when you only look at AFC receivers (which he’s competing against for a Pro Bowl spot).

Among AFC receivers only, Sutton currently ranks third in the AFC in receiving yards, fourth in touchdowns, and third in receptions. The better receivers in the NFL have been in the NFC this year, save for Ja’Marr Chase, who leads the league in receiving yards and touchdowns.

While Sutton might be a long shot to make the Pro Bowl, you can’t rule him out given where he ranks in the AFC field.

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