The U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has granted conditional national bank status to Erebor Bank, a new technology-oriented bank seeking to fill the void left by the collapse of several such lenders in 2023, including Silicon Valley Bank.
OCC chief Jonathan Gould said Wednesday’s approval, the first charter of a new bank in his tenure at the regulator, offers “evidence that the OCC under my leadership does not impose blanket barriers on banks that want to engage in digital asset activities.”
“Permitted digital asset activities, like any other legally permitted banking activity, have a place in the federal banking system if they are conducted in a safe and sound manner,” Gould said in a statement.
The firm, drawing on the tech world’s love of names associated with JRR Tolkien’s fiction, described itself in its incorporation application as a national bank that will “operate as a banking organization offering traditional banking products, as well as products and services related to virtual currencies.”
The banking regulator’s “preliminary conditional approval” depends on the new institution meeting current requirements in a kind of trial period. The agency’s approval letter noted that Erebor “will direct its products and services to technology companies and ultra-high net worth individuals who use virtual currencies.”
This year, as regulators appointed by cryptocurrency-boosting President Donald Trump reversed the government’s earlier resistance to cryptocurrency-linked companies, U.S. banking agencies, which also include the Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, have sought to issue more industry-friendly policy guidance.
In 2021, Anchorage Digital had opened the cryptocurrency-oriented bank movement in the OCC charters, and remained alone in that category for years, but several digital asset companies have recently taken steps to seek federal banking charters in the US. The OCC is the only regulator that grants such charters on a national level.
