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How Erebor Bank’s Sweet Stablecoin Deal Backfired

15 September 2026 at 15:30

When Palmer Luckey’s Erebor Bank launched earlier this year, it made an attractive pitch to lure new crypto customers: It would convert their stablecoins to cash for free.

But Erebor wound up pulling the offer after several months, after sophisticated crypto trading firms sniffed out a way to make an easy profit out of the offerβ€”at a cost to Erebor. The episode demonstrates that the young bank is still figuring out how to manage the risks of serving the cryptocurrency industry, a world of fast-moving financial flows, colorful characters and unusual business models.

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