Three Years After Silicon Valley Bank Run and Collapse, Peter Thiel's Lone Mountain Bank Officially Opens

February 9 — Erebor Bank, a crypto-focused financial institution, became the first to secure a national banking charter during the Trump administration’s second term, officially launching today. Chartered by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), Erebor is tailored for the innovation economy, with a focus on artificial intelligence (AI), defense technology, and digital assets. Its name, drawn from the Dwarven kingdom in *The Lord of the Rings*, symbolizes long-term development of crypto financial infrastructure. Unlike consumer-focused banks, Erebor operates as an enterprise infrastructure bank. It plans to offer GPU equipment financing for AI data centers, contract guarantee loans for defense tech startups, and a functional stablecoin business. The bank will integrate an internal fiat-to-stablecoin exchange to enable true 24/7 operations. Erebor also aims to fill the gap left by the 2023 collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB). SVB was a critical funding source for early-stage tech firms and venture capital (VC) firms—clients traditional banks often shunned due to high risk. Notably, Peter Thiel is a major investor and supporter of Erebor. His Founders Fund has invested in the bank and is one of its early, key endorsers. Erebor’s founders—Palmer Luckey and Joe Lonsdale (Palantir co-founder and 8VC founder)—are long-time partners and allies of Thiel (Palantir itself was a core Thiel project). Three years ago, during the SVB crisis, Thiel exacerbated the situation: Founders Fund advised portfolio companies to withdraw funds from SVB on the eve of its collapse, and the fund itself immediately pulled all its assets. Media coverage of the advice spread rapidly among Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and VC circles, accelerating panic. SVB collapsed the next day, marking the fastest bank run-induced failure in history.