What It Means To Be A Bank Is Rapidly Changing

Hey all, Jason here.

I was working from Mexico City last week, and, I have to say, I missed my timezone arbitrage. Working from seven hours ahead of the U.S. east coast lets me spend all morning on focused work, before my inbox and phone start blowing up. Being one hour behind has been… different. Being in Mexico City did allow me to swing by the Stablecon Roadshow on Wednesday — congrats to Nik Milanović and team on a great event!

Mitchell Troyanovsky, Matt Harpe and the entire Basis team also deserve congratulations on announcing they have raised a $100 million round that values the company at a $1.15 billion. The round was led by Accel with participation from GV and former Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein. I’m proud to have been an early investor and supporter in the company, and seeing the caliber of the team and its execution is inspiring.

Last but not least, if you missed the conversation I moderated on managing risk in layered bank-fintech partnerships with Unit21’s Trisha Kothari and Cable’s Natasha Vernier, you can watch the replay here.

Subscribe or Support by Upgrading

The oft-used quote, widely attributed to Vladimir Lenin, that “there are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen,” presumably wasn’t in reference to the banking industry. But it feels apt to describe the current pace of change in the U.S. banking system.

In just the last several weeks, numerous entities have newly applied or received the necessary approvals to charter de novo banks:

• Morgan Stanley applied to form Morgan Stanley Digital Trust, a national trust bank focused on digital assets

• Nomura applied to form Laser Digital National Trust Bank, focused on digital assets

• Payoneer, a global HR/payroll platform, applied to form PAYO Digital Bank, which includes a focus on developing and using stablecoins as part of its business

• Stripe, the parent of stablecoin infrastructure company Bridge, received conditional approval to form Bridge National Trust Bank

• Foris DAX, the parent of Crypto.com, received conditional approval to form Foris Dax National Trust Bank, which will do business as Crypto.com National Trust Bank

• World Liberty Financial applied to form World Liberty Trust Company, focused on digital assets

• General Motors received approval of its deposit insurance application necessary for its Utah-chartered industrial loan bank, GM Financial Bank

• Edward Jones received approval of its deposit insurance application necessary for its Utah-chartered industrial loan bank, Edward Jones Bank

• Nubank, which holds a charter in its home country of Brazil, received conditional approval as a full-service deposit-taking bank

• Erebor received its national bank charter and officially began operating on Sunday, February 8th

And this is just a subset of recent activity — numerous charter and, as applicable, deposit insurance applications remain pending, including from PayPal (Utah industrial loan…