Tech billionaires including Palmer Luckey set up dumb new bank for those who didn't get burned enough in the 2022 crypto crash

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It's all about the stablecoins baby.

Palmer Luckey strokes his goatee.
(Image credit: Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Palmer Luckey, the founder of Oculus and occasional Bond villain, has taken a break from getting trapped in his own car elevators to lead a collective of tech billionaires in founding a new crypto bank called Erebor.

First thing's first: this is not a bank for the likes of you and I. Erebor is all about investing in start-ups in the field of tech, AI, defence and of course crypto. Defence you say? Why yes, because Palmer is being joined in this venture by fellow Bond villain Peter Thiel's Founders Fund, as well as Joe Lonsdale, who co-founded the military/surveillance software company Palantir.

Except… well, remember the crypto crash we just mentioned? The one that took down SVB? Yeah that was sparked by the collapse of TerraUSD, a stablecoin that turned out to be anything but, and whose founder Do Kwon was finally extradited to the US to face charges this year.

A man reaches for dollars that will be forever out of reach.

(Image credit: SIphotography via Getty)

The crypto-boosters will point out that TerraUSD was an algorithmic stablecoin, meaning it was not backed by real reserves, but I'm not sure many of the others are either. I mean, look, I've got two billion dollars in my closet to back the brand-new RichStantonCoinTM, and will happily sell you a million dollars' worth: I just can't show you the real dollars, mkay?

The point of SVB and thus Erebor is risky bets on fledgling startups that are unlikely to be backed by traditional finance, which has all these pesky rules and regulations. Erebor will especially look to serve such entities with "insufficient access to credit," so who knows, but I might end up giving RichStantonCoinTM a go.

2022/3 was a hell of a time for crypto, and it felt like the wheels were coming off: not before time, some would say. It's me by the way, I am some. But those who do not learn from the past are condemned to repeat it, and from here Erebor just looks like a big juicy domino in a field full of them.

Rich Stanton
Rich Stanton
Senior Editor

Rich is a games journalist with 15 years' experience, beginning his career on Edge magazine before working for a wide range of outlets, including Ars Technica, Eurogamer, GamesRadar+, Gamespot, the Guardian, IGN, the New Statesman, Polygon, and Vice. He was the editor of Kotaku UK, the UK arm of Kotaku, for three years before joining PC Gamer. He is the author of a Brief History of Video Games, a full history of the medium, which the Midwest Book Review described as "[a] must-read for serious minded game historians and curious video game connoisseurs alike."

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