Written by: BlockBeats Staff, kkk
Stablecoins are «coming ashore», and the «ceiling» of American crypto finance has been opened again.
Just last night, the US House of Representatives officially passed the GENIUS Act and CLARITY Act, providing a «regulatory framework» for the stablecoin track and setting a clear regulatory tone for the entire digital asset industry. The White House subsequently announced that Trump will personally sign the GENIUS Act this Friday. From now on, stablecoins will no longer be experimental products in a gray area, but will soon be written into US law and endorsed by the national government as an «official monetary tool».
[The rest of the translation follows the same professional and accurate approach, maintaining the specified translations for specific terms like 'BlockBeats', 'crypto', etc.]Multiple mainstream financial media outlets have confirmed: Peter Thiel is jointly initiating a new bank called Erebor with tech entrepreneurs Palmer Luckey and Joe Lonsdale, and has officially applied for a national bank charter from the OCC. The bank's target customers are crypto, AI, defense, and manufacturing startups that "mainstream banks are unwilling to serve", attempting to become an alternative after Silicon Valley Bank's collapse.
The bank's founders also demonstrate a clear "Silicon Valley political capital intersection": Peter Thiel (PayPal and Palantir co-founder, Founders Fund leader), Palmer Luckey (Oculus founder, Anduril co-creator), Joe Lonsdale (Palantir co-founder, 8VC founder). All three are significant political donors for Trump in the 2024 US presidential election and have close connections with the currently proposed GENIUS Act.
According to Erebor's application to the OCC, Founders Fund will be the primary capital support, and the three founders will not participate in daily management, only intervening in governance as board members. The bank's management will be led by former Circle advisors and the CEO of compliance software company Aer Compliance, aiming to clearly delineate politics from operations and emphasize its positioning as an institutionalized financial entity.
Learning from Silicon Valley Bank's lessons, Erebor will implement a 1:1 deposit reserve system and control the loan-to-deposit ratio below 50%, preventing maturity mismatches and credit inflation. The application documents show that stablecoin services are a core business, planning to support custody, minting, and redemption of compliant stablecoins like USDC, Dai, and RLUSD, creating the "most regulated stablecoin trading institution" and providing legal, compliant fiat entry/exit channels and on-chain asset services.
Its customer profile is precise: targeting innovative enterprises in virtual currency, artificial intelligence, defense technology, and high-end manufacturing considered "high-risk" by traditional banks, along with their employees and investors. It will also serve "international clients" - overseas institutions struggling to enter the US dollar financial system, relying on dollar clearing, or seeking to reduce cross-border transaction costs with stablecoins. Erebor plans to establish "correspondent banking relationships" as a super interface for these enterprises.
Its business model also has a crypto-native character: deposit and loan services using Bitcoin and Ethereum as collateral assets, avoiding traditional mortgage and auto loans. The balance sheet will hold small amounts of BTC and ETH for operational needs like gas fees, without speculative trading. Notably, Erebor has clearly defined regulatory boundaries: not providing asset custody services requiring a trust license, only offering on-chain fund settlement without directly holding user assets.
In essence, this is an advanced version of Silicon Valley Bank, and under various crypto-friendly policies, Erebor is likely to become one of the first "US dollar relay banks" with a compliant status to custody mainstream stablecoins like USDC and RLUSD, providing a federal clearing pathway for stablecoins.
National Bank Charter: The Future of Crypto Banking
[The rest of the translation continues in the same professional and accurate manner]Everyone in the crypto circle understands that this is a true "promotion" in the real sense, transforming from being viewed as outsiders and second-class citizens by the banking system to being recognized as regular troops by the American financial system. Therefore, crypto stars like Circle, Ripple, Anchorage, and Paxos are all working on obtaining federal trust bank licenses while pushing for main account approvals.
However, because the Federal Reserve is concerned that "main accounts" might be misused by crypto companies, potentially bringing financial stability risks (such as sudden large-scale liquidation of risk assets affecting system liquidity), and possibly facing regulatory challenges like money laundering, illegal fund flows, and technical security issues, no pure crypto company has been approved for a Federal Reserve main account so far. Even Anchorage, the first to "break the ice", received a federal trust bank license but still hasn't been approved for a main account.
So who is still pursuing bank licenses?
Circle first submitted materials by the end of June 2025, planning to establish a new bank called First National Digital Currency Bank, N.A., to directly custody USDC reserves and provide institutional custody services.
Shortly after, Ripple officially announced in early July that it has submitted an application to the OCC, simultaneously applying for a federal main account, aiming to place its stablecoin RLUSD reserves directly in the central bank system, with a very aggressive stance.
The veteran custody company BitGo is not falling behind and is waiting for OCC approval. According to public information, BitGo is also one of the designated service providers for "Trump USD1" reserves.
Besides these three most representative crypto "regular troops", Wise (formerly TransferWise) has also submitted a license application positioned as a non-deposit custody bank. Newcomers like Erebor Bank have boldly announced plans to include AI, crypto, defense, and other new economic industries within their service radius. The first-generation blockchain bank, First Blockchain Bank and Trust, had attempted during the Biden era but quietly withdrew due to tight regulatory windows. Fidelity Digital Assets is reportedly planning to submit materials, though this hasn't been officially confirmed.
If Circle, Ripple, and BitGo can obtain this license, they can bypass state-level compliance, expand nationwide, and even hope to access the Federal Reserve main account - once accomplished, stablecoin USD reserves could be placed in the central bank vault, with custody and clearing capabilities able to compete directly with traditional Wall Street giants.
It seems that regulators have both anticipation and wariness about crypto companies wanting to become banks. On one hand, OCC personnel changes and policy warming have indeed brought a "window of opportunity" for crypto companies; on the other hand, these licenses do not equate to full banking business licenses and still cannot accept current deposits or provide loans.
The new window is open, but the threshold remains high. Who will be the first to knock on the Federal Reserve's door? This will be the most exciting second half of the game between Wall Street bankers and crypto giants, with the winner potentially rewriting the financial landscape of the next decade.
For the crypto industry, stablecoins officially coming ashore and banks formally opening their doors mean that the previously parallel crypto world and Wall Street are finally "converging" under regulatory sunlight. Crypto assets, once repeatedly disputed by regulators, banks, and capital markets, are now walking into the daily accounts of every American and the balance sheets of every global financial institution as "mainstream assets".
