Wyoming
Hedge Against Inflation? Alternative Currency “Goldbacks” Catching On In Wyoming
T-Joe’s Steakhouse and Saloon owner Sherry Lyle collects about $1,000 a month in a type of currency that at first looks like it must come from a foreign country or a board game.
The flashy golden bills capture attention around the dining room whenever they come out, but were actually designed and developed specifically around Wyoming.
They’re called Wyoming goldbacks, and they are offered in denominations of 1, 5, 10, 25 and 50 online at wyominggoldbacks.com. Each denomination is decorated with art that showcases the Cowboy State while also highlighting a different virtue — liberty, loyalty, respect, and so on.
But what’s really unique about these bills is that they’re made of pure gold that has been laid down inside a protective polymer using the latest, cutting-edge technology.
The smallest denomination — a 1 — is 1/1000th of a troy ounce of gold. That bill has Devils Tower as a backdrop, with a buffalo, an eagle and sunflowers framing a Shoshone woman named Reverentia (Latin for “respect”).
The caption below her translates that idea to “revere what is sacred.”
The Art Of Business
It’s a work of art, and the beauty is part of the reason Lyle started accepting goldbacks at her restaurant. She likes collecting different kinds of currency.
She also likes that these bills were designed specifically for Wyoming.
“They’re unique to Wyoming and a couple of other states,” she said. “And it kind of shows our independent spirit.”
Lyle estimates that she has a party wanting to pay a check or tip a server in goldbacks about every other week.
Sometimes, the transaction confuses those who are watching.
“One of our servers was like, ‘Oh, we can tip our bussers in pesos?” Lyle recalled, laughing. “That was kind of funny, but like, ‘No, you can’t.’”
Because the currency contains real gold, the bills can gain or lose value over time with the value of gold. And like the commodity, gold mostly goes up in value.
Over time, Lyle has watched the value of her goldbacks rise, and now she actually has some from every state with a series — Nevada, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Wyoming and Utah, the latter being where the series first began.
“It doesn’t go up a ton,” she said. “But it’s just been a neat thing, and it’s nice to support the businesses that sell these. We will use them eventually, but we’ll always keep a couple just for, you know, the collector value.”
Apocalypse Not
T-Joes isn’t the only Wyoming business accepting goldbacks.
Adam Mathes, owner of A-1 Tire in Casper, started taking them about a month ago after one of his customers showed him a few of the bills.
He wasn’t looking at it from any sort of apocalyptic perspective. He just sees goldbacks as another option to differentiate his store from corporate chains.
“It looks like we’re the only tire store that will accept something like that around here,” Mathes told Cowboy State Daily. “Being a locally owned small business, I don’t know if some of the corporations would even consider that. So, it’s another way for people to see our business and to be able to have a different form of payment.”
Tyler McCann, owner of Cowboy Cuts in Pavillion, thinks goldbacks might serve as a great hedge against inflation, in case there are any more price surges.
“I think gold is more stable,” he said. “Even though it’s going up and down, I just see so much inflation that I would like to have that available for our customers.”
So far, neither of them have had any takers, but McCann was particularly keen.
“I think they are fascinating,” he said. “You can feel the difference in the weight between different denominations. You can almost immediately tell the difference when you hold them in your hand.”
In all, about 160 Wyoming businesses now accept goldbacks in an incredible range — pet stores, restaurants, barber shops, carpenters, auto parts and more.
It Came From A dream
Goldbacks arose from a dream that the company’s founder, Jeremy Cordon, had about some sort of an apocalypse or emergency.
“There was some sort of national emergency,” Goldback Chief Operating Officer Kevan Mills told Cowboy State Daily. “He didn’t know what it was, whether it was a war, or an earthquake, or what. But he was at a grocery store trying to buy groceries and everyone in the store was trying to pay with credit cards and dollars.”
The store owner wasn’t having it.
“We don’t take that here, it’s no good anymore,” the dream grocery store owner said.
Someone else came up to the owner with an impossibly thin, rectangular piece of gold, and offered that to the owner instead.
“Would you take this?” the customer asked.
“Gold?” the owner replied. “Absolutely I’ll take gold.”
It was then Cordon woke up and immediately called his business partner to tell him about the dream.
“We have to do this,” Cordon told him. “It’s incredibly important.”
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Jaquie Georgio, a waitress at T-Joe’s Steakhouse and Saloon, looks at a collection of goldbacks from various states. She has yet to receive a tip in them, but said they are cool looking and she would love to get one. (Renée Jean, Cowboy State Daily) -
Laura Hoch, from left, watches as her husband Chris sorts through their goldbacks while across the table, Caroline Walter watches and her husband, Dan Walter, checks exchange rates using the Goldback Company’s app. (Renée Jean, Cowboy State Daily) -
Jason “Junior” Lyle holds up a collection of goldbacks traded at T-Joe’s Steakhouse and Saloon for meals. The restaurant is one of 160 stores in Wyoming that are willing to accept goldbacks in exchange for services. (Renée Jean, Cowboy State Daily)
Making Gold More Practical
While the idea for goldbacks may have come from a dream, the bills do solve a practical, real-world problem for those who’d like to use gold for transactions.
A single gold coin weighing an ounce is worth just over $2,000 — a bit hard for most grocery stores, restaurants, beauty shops and the like to break down.
But a single goldback with a thousandth of an ounce of gold — worth about $4.66, according to Tuesday’s exchange rate — is a much easier denomination to work with.
“For perspective, a thousandth of an ounce, if you took a BB from a BB gun and cut it into 12 pieces, one of the pieces of that BB would be 1,000th of an ounce,” Mills told cowboy State Daily. “So how do you carry that around? If you’re going to carry that little teeny — I mean it’s not much bigger than few grains of sand.”
But gold is highly malleable, so a small amount of it can be spread very thinly.
“A 50-cent piece of gold, hammered to as thin as you can possibly make it would cover an entire football field,” Mills said. “That’s how thin you can make gold.”
Then, it’s just a matter of something to protect the integrity of such a thin sheet of gold, keeping it all intact so that every bill has exactly what it says it has regardless of trades.
That’s where the polymer comes into play. It both protects the thin layer of gold and makes it easy to carry around.
“Now you can put it in your wallet and carry it safely,” Mills said.
Goldbacks are also what’s called “fungible,” which means they are available in readily interchangeable denominations. Five 1s, for example, can be traded for a 5 goldback, which is 1/200th of a troy ounce, or 10 ones could be traded for a 10 goldback, which is 1/100th of a troy ounce. Denominations of 25 and 50 are also available, which are 1/40th and 1/20th of a troy ounce respectively.
At First Utah Was It
Although goldbacks can be used anywhere that a business is willing to trade in gold, the bills started out initially as strictly a Utah series. There was never any intention of doing goldbacks that highlighted other states, Mills told Cowboy State Daily.
But once the Utah goldback series started circulating, they almost instantly attracted interest from investors who wanted to see their states highlighted with a goldback series.
Soon, there were even sponsors willing to help front the cost of that.
Wyoming was actually the fourth state to get its own series, and the sponsor was Natrona County state Sen. Bob Ide, R-Casper.
Ide was not a state senator at the time he sponsored the development of the Wyoming goldback, just someone who Mills said was interested in seeing it happen.
Wyoming may have been the fourth state to get its own series, but it’s been tops when it comes to embracing goldbacks, according to investor Abram Taylor.
“Whenever I check Google trend reports, Wyoming is usually the top one or two every day of people looking them up,” he told Cowboy State Daily. “And whenever we have gone up to Jackson Hole to, you know, have lunch and get out of town, I always tip with goldbacks and they’re always very well received. The waitresses are always like, ‘Oh my, what is this? This is cool.’”
Taylor even recalls buying his wife an expensive fur coat in Wyoming, and was pleasantly surprised when the shop’s owner was willing to take goldbacks for the purchase.
Not only that, the shop owner seemed really eager to get them.
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A range of goldbacks from different states in the collection of bills T-Joe’s Steakhouse and Saloon in Cheyenne has collected so far. (Renée Jean, Cowboy State Daily) -
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A 1 Wyoming goldback contains 1/1000th of a troy ounce of gold laid down in a polymer that protects the gold and the artistic design. (Renée Jean, Cowboy State Daily)
The Midas touch
Goldbacks have had something of a Midas touch so far, trading in all 50 states and on every continent in the world except Antarctica.
Everyone who touches them seems to fall in love with them.
“So, our first year in business we did $250,000 in goldbacks,” Mills told Cowboy State Daily. “Our second year, we did $1 million dollars in goldbacks. Our third year, we did $6 million and our fourth year, we did $12 million. Last year, we did $34 million.”
Mills credits the exponential growth in part to the way gold can work as a hedge against inflation.
“In the two years since we released the Wyoming goldback in September 2022, the value of goldbacks has gone up by 28%,” Mills said. “So, if someone bought gold two years ago and then sold them to Alpine Gold for 5% under the daily rate today, they would have made 23%.”
Inflation rates from October 2021 to October 2022, by comparison, were 7.7%, according to the Consumer Price Index, making Goldbacks a clear winner for that particular time frame.
Mills said one important distinction to make with goldback bills is that they’re not meant to replace the U.S. dollar. They are what is called a local currency, of which there are about 3,000 in the United States.
“The federal government issues all the currency and there’s actually in the Constitution it’s written that states cannot produce their own currency and that nothing shall be used as money unless it be gold or silver,” he said. “So that’s what we do. We’re just giving people an alternative currency.”
Renée Jean can be reached at Renee@CowboyStateDaily.com.
Wyoming
Hoping to draw Colorado interest, construction begins at $80M betting facility in Laramie County
CHEYENNE, Wyo. — Foundation work is beginning this week on Wyoming’s next horse betting and gaming house.
The $80 million Wyoming Downs facility in Laramie County, one of two the company is investing in over the next couple of years, is poised to be one of the largest facilities of its kind in the state. The company is aiming for a spring 2027 opening.
The facility will host upwards of 600 historic horse racing machines, Wyoming’s largest TV wall, multiple dining options and more across 58,000 square feet. More land was bought for future hotel development. Commuters driving between Cheyenne and the Colorado border can see clearly from Interstate 25 the expansive development.
That placement along the travel corridor is purposeful, Wyoming Downs and 307 Horse Racing President Kyle Ridgeway said.
“I think that the targeted consumer for this is from Colorado or from the Front Range,” Ridgeway said. “I anticipate we’re going to have plenty of people from Cheyenne come down here to play and enjoy the amenities, but when you look at 600,000 people within a 30-minute drive, that’s what justifies this investment and brings all that tax revenue in from another state, which is fantastic.
“We don’t get the opportunity to do that in Wyoming very often.”
There is still plenty to offer Cheyenne residents besides the facility’s amenities. Ridgeway said in a speech to attendees at the project’s groundbreaking Tuesday, June 2, that more than 150 permanent jobs will be supported by the facility on top of the dozens supported by the companies’ corporate offices and the 400-plus involved in the project’s construction.
Groathouse Construction, a Wyoming business, is the project’s general contractor. Wyoming Downs said it believes putting the project in local hands also helps keep the project uniquely Wyoming-focused.
Ridgeway added the facilities have already proven themselves to be effective tax revenue generators for the local governments. The Wyoming Gaming Commission’s 2025 report, released in late May, shows bettors wagered $2.49 billion on historic horse racing machines last year, a jump from the $2.11 billion wagered in 2024.
Wyoming Downs facilities generate roughly $25 million in taxes annually across the state, and Ridgeway estimated after the ceremony that the upcoming $80 million facility alone will generate an additional $3 million for Laramie County once the property has been in operation for a few years.
Horse betting sites have been increasingly popping up across Wyoming this decade. The Wyoming Downs location will be Cheyenne’s second large-scale horse betting facility since 2024, when the 30,000-square-foot Horse Palace at Swan Ranch opened. Ridgeway said Wyoming Downs is still offering something fresh for tourists and residents.
“This’ll have amenities that Swan Ranch doesn’t have, including the largest TV wall in Wyoming and a pretty super-cool sports viewing area with a restaurant and just a level of finish and class that I don’t think Wyoming has quite seen yet with these types of properties,” he said.
Ridgeway said he thinks resident fatigue with these facilities isn’t as strong as it appears, especially given the tourism benefits of off-track betting.
“Wyoming’s been built on mineral extraction and tourism, and what this is is a touristic facility. I’m not aware of any particular pushback about this specific facility outside of — you see random social media comments where people say, ‘Oh, another gambling facility.’ But where this is located, I think people in Cheyenne have generally been supportive of,” he said.
The Laramie County facility will be just one part of a larger project Wyoming Downs is working on over the next few years. Construction will begin in early 2027 on a similar facility in Evanston looking to draw in Utah and western Colorado crowds.
Some of the company’s current facilities, notably in Casper, Cheyenne and Rock Springs, will see millions poured into renovations as well. New smaller-scale parlors will also go up in Gillette and Green River this year, according to an information packet provided by the company.
More details will come as the construction process develops, Ridgeway said. Details about amenities, such as what the complex’s dining options will look like, remain undisclosed, though Ridgeway promised that options will be “excellent.”
“We haven’t made final selections on what the options are, but we have a number of different options on the table that we’re considering for what we want to offer for the customers,” Ridgeway said. “You have to have something that’s high quality for where this is located. If somebody’s going to drive 25 or 35, or even 45 minutes to come here, they got to be able to sit down and have a quality meal.”
For more information as it becomes available and to learn more about Wyoming Downs facilities and 307 Horse Racing‘s events and offerings, see the companies’ websites. Renderings for the upcoming Cheyenne facility commissioned by the company are available for viewing below.
Related
GILLETTE, Wyo. — Two of the Republican candidates for Wyoming governor, Megan Degenfelder and Brent Bien, went head to head in Campbell County this evening. They both highlighted differences in some areas but agreed on energy, public lands, government oversight, abortion and election security.
Degenfelder, Wyoming’s superintendent of public instruction, introduced herself as “a Wyoming ranch kid whose parents clawed their way into the middle class” and said she believes Wyoming is “worth fighting for” because she believes the Wyoming people’s lives are at stake.
Bien, a retired Marine Corps colonel and combat veteran, pointed to his military career and leadership experience.
“My whole adult life has been about leadership, about principled conservative leadership,” he said. “My objective is to restore principled conservative leadership, accountability and discipline to Cheyenne.”
Nuclear energy
Both candidates supported Wyoming’s role in energy production but opposed bringing outside nuclear waste into the state.
“I do not want Wyoming to be … the permanent repository for spent nuclear fuel. I will not allow that to happen on my watch,” Bien said.
Degenfelder said Wyoming should consider nuclear power as part of its energy future but added, “If it works for us to be able to have nuclear as part of the portfolio, then it has to be right for Wyoming and that is ensuring that we do not accept anyone else’s waste, period.”
Public lands
The candidates also opposed privatization of public lands.
“No one loves public lands more than I do,” Degenfelder said. “You start selling that to the highest bidder, Wyoming loses who we are.”
Bien said he is “absolutely opposed” to federal lands being sold to private interests.
“If they do decide to dispose of it, then we as the state of Wyoming should get first-right refusal at no cost,” he said.
Attorney general and judicial appointments
When asked what each would be looking for in an attorney general and judicial appointment, both candidates called for conservative leadership.
Bien said he would seek an attorney general from outside state government.
“I want a clean set of eyes to look at what everything’s been that’s been going on,” he said. “I want someone who will put people first and it will put Wyoming first.”
Degenfelder said she wants stronger advocacy from state agencies.
“I want a bulldog in not just the attorney general’s office, but in all state agencies,” she said. “I want an attorney general that is so aligned to my mission and vision and what I believe that there’s an amicus brief on my desk the next morning after an action takes place.”
Immigration
Both candidates supported stronger immigration enforcement.
Bien explained he wanted to cooperate with ICE “to the fullest extent possible” and to make sure immigrants who are not in the United States legally would be sent out of the state.
Degenfelder said illegal immigration is already affecting communities in Wyoming.
“If you’re here legally, you got nothing to worry about. If you aren’t, it’s time to go home,” she said.
Energy development and green energy
Energy policy generated some of the sharpest comments of the night.
Degenfelder argued renewable energy projects should compete without government support.
“I’m also an economist and so I’ll tell you the way that you kill these green energy, you make them play on the same playing field,” she said. “No more tax subsidies, no more handouts, ensuring the regulatory environment is just as equal.”
Bien took a firmer stance against renewable development.
“Folks, there’s no place in Wyoming for this green energy,” he said. “I want these things bonded up front and where we’re not paying for these like we did all the gas wells. The answer for me is absolutely, unequivocally no.”
Economic development
Degenfelder argued government should focus on infrastructure such as water and sewer systems rather than directing economic development.
“Government does not create jobs. Private business does,” she said.
Bien echoed that sentiment.
“The only business that government has in business is simply to get out of the way. It’s to cut taxes. It’s to deregulate,” he said. “Right now, we’re turning into state capitalism where we have our own state government picking winners and losers.”
Government audits
Both candidates supported increased auditing of state government.
“This state has not done a full-blown budgetary audit since 1989,” Bien said. “Whoever’s belly-aching loudest is going to get audited first.”
Degenfelder agreed.
“We should be auditing every single state agency, every single budget line all the time,” she said. “Government is a beast, and you need someone in there who can tame it and who knows how to do it.”
Abortion
Abortion was another topic where both candidates expressed strong opposition.
“Life starts at conception and there are no exceptions,” Degenfelder said. “We are now one of the most openly abortion states in the country because of that ruling by the Supreme Court. We’re working against the devil here.”
Bien also opposed abortion.
“Folks, for me, there are no exceptions. Life does begin at conception,” he said.
Election integrity
Bien advocated for hand-counting ballots.
“I am very much a proponent of hand tabulation being the primary method of counting all cast paper ballots and I will push that way,” he said.
Degenfelder called for paper ballots statewide.
“Every single ballot should be a paper ballot,” she said, adding that she supports “banning dropboxes.”
Republican platform
Both candidates pledged support for the Wyoming Republican Party platform.
“80% is a no-brainer, and we need to require that out of our elected officials,” Degenfelder said.
Bien said he expects to be held to “100%” of the platform.
“The party’s been co-opted. You have to have an ‘R’ behind your name to win in this state,” he said.
Candidate priorities
During a segment where candidates selected their own discussion topics, Degenfelder highlighted school choice, career and technical education, removing pornography from school libraries and protecting Wyoming’s water rights.
Bien focused on education and agriculture, criticizing student proficiency rates and proposing policies aimed at strengthening Wyoming’s agricultural industry, including declaring agriculture critical infrastructure and reducing regulations on small butcheries.
Technology and education
Although technology and its place within education was not discussed during the debate, County 17 asked both Degenfelder and Bien their thoughts regarding student technology in schools.
Bien said technology is being used too much in classrooms and is making it harder for students to think on their own.
“What it’s doing is it’s dumbing down our kids,” Bien said. “Our kids aren’t learning how to critically think anymore. They go straight to one of the AI things and it generates an answer for them.”
Degenfelder said she backed a bill to ban cellphones during instruction time.
“I supported a bill that came through the legislature a couple of years ago that actually would ban cell use during instructional time, and I stand by that,” Degenfelder said. “I think that it’s appropriate to take cellphones out of classrooms, and what we find is that kids thrive.”
Closing statements
In closing remarks, Bien emphasized his experience as an outsider candidate.
“I am the only outsider in this race, but I am the only one who’s got an inordinate amount of leadership experience,” he said. “Folks, you deserve a government that you can trust.”
Degenfelder pointed to her endorsements from President Donald Trump and U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman.
“I get asked a lot, ‘How did you get the Trump endorsement?’” Degenfelder said. “The answer is really simple. I earned it.”
Alongside other candidates, Bien and Degenfelder will be competing for support in Wyoming’s Republican gubernatorial primary Aug. 18.
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