Today in crypto: The Stand With Crypto advocacy group has prioritized backing a key US market structure bill in a highly contentious political year marked by midterm elections. Zcash’s nonprofit backer Bootstrap said governance tensions stem from nonprofit limits on outside investment, following a split with Electric Coin Company. Meanwhile, Wyoming launched its state-backed FRNT stablecoin to the public.
Coinbase-backed advocacy group targets market structure bill in 2026
As the US political calendar increasingly turns toward the 2026 midterm elections, Stand With Crypto says its top priority is helping push long-sought digital asset market structure legislation across the finish line.
In its year-in-review report, the Coinbase-backed advocacy group said it added roughly 675,000 new supporters nationwide, bringing its total membership to about 2.6 million. The group has positioned itself as one of the largest grassroots efforts focused on cryptocurrency policy in the United States.
Stand With Crypto said it plans to support pro-crypto candidates in congressional races during the midterms, but emphasized that its “primary goal” remains advancing comprehensive market structure legislation, specifically the Responsible Financial Innovation Act, which aims to clarify regulatory oversight of digital assets.
Such legislation could represent a significant milestone for the crypto industry, which has long pushed for clearer rules defining the roles of regulators such as the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
Zcash backer Bootstrap says split due to clash over nonprofit rules, Zashi future
Bootstrap, the nonprofit that supports the privacy-focused cryptocurrency Zcash, said a recent governance dispute that led to the departure of key board members stemmed from the legal limits nonprofits face when seeking outside investment.
The comments follow the decision by the Electric Coin Company, the main development team behind Zcash (ZEC), to separate from Bootstrap and form a new company. ECC cited concerns over what it described as “malicious governance actions,” Cointelegraph reported Thursday.
In its official response, Bootstrap said the board members engaged in discussions regarding “external investment and alternative structures to privatize” Zashi, the self-custodial crypto wallet built for private Zcash transactions.
The board discussed “external investment and alternative structures to privatize Zashi, while working with legal counsel to ensure any path forward would comply with U.S. nonprofit law, remain consistent with the long-term mission of Zcash, and not jeopardize the broader Zcash community,” according to an announcement shared by board member Zaki Manian on Thursday.
Zashi was developed by ECC and launched on mobile platforms in early 2024. Its source code is publicly available, reflecting Zcash’s open-source model, under which no single entity owns or controls the protocol.
Wyoming rolls out state-backed stablecoin to public
Wyoming’s Frontier Stable Token (FRNT), the first stablecoin issued by a US state, is now available to the public following delays caused by lingering regulatory hurdles.
The state’s governor, Mark Gordon, said on Wednesday that it is “the first fiat-backed, fully-reserved stable token to be issued by a public entity in the United States.”
He added that the token would provide “a cheaper, faster, and more transparent means of transacting,” and would be “another source of funding for our schools and can lower the taxpayer burden in our state.”
The token can be bought on the crypto exchange Kraken and is live on the Solana blockchain. It can also be bridged to Arbitrum, Avalanche, Base, Ethereum, Optimism and Polygon using the Stargate platform.
The stablecoin can also be bought through Rain, a Visa-powered, integrated card platform operating on the Avalanche blockchain.
