The Gold OZ Fund Picked by Wells Fargo and Wyoming

Most Opportunity Zone investors are looking at real estate deals. But Josh Phair built a precious metals vaulting business inside an OZ in Casper, Wyoming that just landed on the front page of The Wall Street Journal, alongside contract wins with Wells Fargo and the state of Wyoming.

Josh is CEO of The Wyoming Reserve. He joined the show to discuss how the business operates as a C Corp with audited physical metal on its balance sheet, the smart liquidity feature offering quarterly redemptions after a one-year hold, and the company’s plan to build a second vault in a nearby rural tract to unlock the 30% basis step-up for OZ 2.0 investors in 2027.

Guest: Josh Phair

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About The Opportunity Zones Podcast

Hosted by OpportunityZones.com founder Jimmy Atkinson, The Opportunity Zones Podcast features guest interviews from fund managers, advisors, policymakers, tax professionals, and other foremost experts in the Opportunity Zones industry.

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Episode Summary

Josh Phair, CEO of the Wyoming Reserve, joins the show to discuss recent developments at his precious metals vaulting business in Casper, Wyoming. Jimmy opens by noting that the Wyoming Reserve was recently featured on the front page of The Wall Street Journal.

Josh says he was not expecting front-page coverage and didn’t realize the company would become the focus of the entire article. The Journal reached out about what’s happening with the states and why US states are getting involved in precious metals.

Two developments drew their attention: Josh’s other company, a minting company, recently won the state of Texas minting contract to produce gold and silver coins for the state of Texas, which Josh describes as fairly historical and not seen in modern times. Separately, the Wyoming Reserve won the contract to hold physical metal for the state of Wyoming. The Journal put boots on the ground at the vaulting facility, took photos, and looked at what a stack of gold bars looks like.

State of Wyoming and Wells Fargo deals

Josh explains that the vaulting business of a hard asset is not too dissimilar from self-storage, but instead of square footage, the calculation is square cubic inches in value. The facility uses armed guards, metal detection, x-ray, drive-through sally ports with guard booths, bulletproof glass, and gun ports — security redundancy that supports insurance limits into the billions of dollars. The vault now holds well into nine figures.

On the Wyoming contract, Josh says the Wyoming Reserve was named a finalist alongside JPMorgan and assumed it was the “token local guy” — a David versus Goliath situation given the state’s long-standing relationship with JPMorgan. The initial allocation was $10 million, but Josh shares that the state is potentially looking at its $33 billion trust with a percentage allocation. Central banks like Poland hold up to 37% in gold; even a 1–3% allocation would represent serious capital. The treasury office also discovered that the Wyoming Reserve’s storage cost allows them to acquire gold and store it for less than a gold ETF, with physical audits every quarter.

On Wells Fargo, Josh describes it as the second credentialing after the state contract. Wells Fargo, like commercial banks that utilize third-party vaults such as Brink’s or Loomis, did its due diligence and elected the Wyoming Reserve as another storage location for its institutional customers. Wells Fargo holds an omnibus account with the Reserve, with its customers underneath. Josh notes that traditionally these banks would store in New York, but customers are starting to think about risk and insurance limits — some New York vaults are well over their insurance limits — and are decentralizing.

Foreign trade zone and federal audits

The vault is a foreign trade zone and is audited quarterly. Josh believes the Wyoming Reserve is the only vault that is also federally audited by US Customs, with both annual and surprise audits. For European customers wanting to store items that face tariffs in the US, the facility can hold material tariff-free while it stays on site.

Why Casper, Wyoming, and how the OZ structure came in

Josh’s other company, an 18-year-old minting business that manufactures legal tender gold and silver coins for 20-plus foreign central banks, won significant business during COVID when government mints shut down. Looking to relocate from Scottsdale, Josh ran an informal RFP across five states — Arizona, Wyoming, South Dakota, Texas, and Florida — looking for a pro-business, conservative state with properties that had special tax advantages. He had worked with special tax zones in Dubai, Switzerland, Hong Kong, and Singapore. He found a building in Casper that was in an OZ and a foreign trade zone, had a rail spur, and was made of concrete. He acquired it in January 2021.

The real estate and build-out were handled by his Scottsdale company; the Wyoming Reserve leases space. Josh emphasizes this is not a real estate play. He wanted to create a hybrid between an ETF and what Michael Saylor has done with Strategy — a vaulting company that owns precious metals (90-plus percent, critical for the OZ), uses them as inventory, and earns business income from storage, sales, metal availability (a repo-like financing where the Reserve owns the asset and makes a particular bar available to one customer, sometimes with their logo), and drop-ship fulfillment services.

Halo investment and the case for precious metals

Josh describes the Wyoming Reserve as a “halo investment” — hard assets with low obsolescence. He references Morgan Stanley’s new 60/20/20 portfolio (60% stocks, 20% bonds, 20% gold) and notes the Central Bank of China has made gold purchases for 18 consecutive months and India is buying every month. Silver was named a critical mineral by the US government last fall. As a C Corp, the Wyoming Reserve is a business operating with audited physical metal as its underlying asset, not just a fund.

Smart liquidity feature

The offering has a one-year hold, after which quarterly liquidity is available. It is sold through the broker-dealer community and is on the Charles Schwab custodial platform and Pershing. The Wyoming Reserve makes a market in its own stock by selling down gold and silver to buy back shares. Pricing is based on the Stock Redemption Value (SRV), close to liquidated value. Investors can also take loans against their stock — three banks (one large national, two small local) are working with investors who want to season their investment.

OZ 2.0 and a rural OZ play

Jimmy explains that Wyoming has only 20 eligible tracts and will get all of them designated under OZ 2.0, giving operators there a head start. Casper just exceeds the 50,000 population cutoff to be a rural tract. Josh says Casper will remain the main facility (expanding from 60,000 to over 70,000 square feet) but they have acquired roughly 50 semi-trucks of concrete vault panels and are actively looking at properties in a rural zone within about 45 minutes to an hour. Moving the headquarters and majority of physical assets to a rural OZ would unlock the 30% step-up in basis. Assets would need to be in place by mid-2027.

Bridge offering for 2025 and 2026 gains

Josh’s team is close to finalizing a hybrid offering for investors with business capital gains in 2026 who want to deploy capital early rather than wait for OZ 2.0 to begin January 1, 2027. It functions as an escrow with a small earn component, followed by a rollout into OZ 1.0 and then OZ 2.0. Josh says there is well in excess of $25 to $30 million sitting and waiting for this structure. The current round is $130 million, and the company plans to move to an evergreen structure with round three and round four to follow. Insiders still own roughly 18% of the same class of shares. Josh works with Deloitte and Forvis on accounting, Crowe on a new ERP system, and Haynes Boone as lead law firm.