Will this matter?

There have been a ton of charters approved by the OCC, thawing the ice around the chartering process dating back to the great financial crisis.

That is almost certainly good: locking out new entrants while also not consolidating the existing means no creation and no destruction, just entropy. Good work to the OCC.

However, now the hard part starts: customers.

The US is one of the most overbanked nations in the world. To get customers, you are up against titans like Chase, upstarts like Robinhood, and the community banking cabal.

Attention is not easy. Some will win: SoFi punches far above their weight, @PalmerLuckey’s @ereborbank has come out of the blocks running hard, but there are also many failures to launch and middle ground results.

So if you are watching this, look for this:

Are they seizing both deposits and mind share?

Do they have a clear value proposition?

What market are they targeting where they have a unique advantage or value prop?

You can answer all of those easily for Erebor.

Now we see if anyone else can replicate that, or even if some of the crypto incumbents can hold on in the big leagues.