The bank is called Erebor, another tech venture from the Tolkien universe.
Erebor, a new tech-focused bank to serve crypto and AI customers, has received conditional approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to begin operations, according to a press release. The list of backers is a real who’s who of people who support President Donald Trump.
Erebor is based in Ohio and was founded by Palmer Luckey, the co-founder of military contractor Anduril and the VR headset company Oculus. Luckey, who’s worth $3.6 billion according to Forbes, first thought of starting the bank after the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank in 2023, according to reporting from July by the Financial Times.
The name Erebor comes from J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings series, referring to a “Lonely Mountain.” So it makes sense that his co-founder is Joe Lonsdale, who also co-founded Palantir, yet another Tolkien reference. Peter Thiel, still another Palantir co-founder, is also backing the new bank, according to the Financial Times.
The “preliminary and conditional” approval to begin operations happened in just four months, an unusually short period of time.
