If you have the kind of bleak humor that can crop up in Times Like These™, there was plenty of absurdity to chuckle about. One conference attendee drove his rental car into a ditch on the way to an industry-sponsored cookout. Others spoke openly about “regulatory capture” as good and necessary. Some dressed up like glammed-out cowboys. Some brought their tiny designer dogs. But cynical amusement can only go so far, and after a few days all I was left with was the aching sense that a better world is right there, within reach, if only we could force the powerful to relax their grip for a single second. You can see it if you look out the window. I lack the vocabulary and the skill to adequately describe Wyoming’s beauty. The highest compliment I can give is that it reminds me of my home state, Alaska, which I have idealized in my heart well beyond reality. Wyoming is so beautiful that when I commented to one worker that it could be heaven, he agreed—if only the bosses weren’t so bad.

–Whitney Wimbish, staff writer

Down and Out on the Crypto Frontier 

JACKSON HOLE, WYOMING – The shuttle bus rolls beneath the Teton Range. The afternoon is warm and bright. The scene is dreamlike, with aspen trees and tall grasses and round hay bales stacked in neat rows. A black horse and foal are in the center of a field and raise their heads in unison to watch the group drive past. Elk leap over a fence to walk among grazing cattle, then leap out again, free.

The scene makes me catch my breath. I turn to the other passengers, ready to say, “Did you see that?” But my seatmates in the black Mercedes van are all glued to their phones. They work in crypto, they’re heading to the Wyoming Blockchain Symposium at the Four Seasons Resort and Residences Jackson Hole, and there’s no time to look out the window.

They stay locked on those phones even as they commiserate. One man reminisces about how convicted fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX once ran a conference and gave his company $15,000 to spend. He sighs. That was awesome. Another offers an update on his company. “Everyone is trying to create these walled gardens,” he says, “and we’re trying to create a public good.” The company presented their idea to the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Treasury last month: What if you could create a basket of assets that perfectly tracks inflation? The regulators “were super stoked,” he says.

“Ugh, the SEC,” says another man. His company just hired two former SEC employees, and they can’t give clear “yes” or “no” answers to anything. They’re great, but “I just want to work in tech where people are really cracked out,” he sighs. Unfortunately, they’re the ones with expertise in TradFi—traditional finance—and that’s where all the money is.

The shuttle stops at the resort, where the cheapest rooms cost more than $1,000 a night and tickets for the invitation-only conference went as high as $10,000. The crypto guys agree to meet at the gondola later, where decals of American BTO, Kraken, and the Solana Policy Institute are stuck to the windows, blocking the view.