Nebraska’s Department of Banking and Finance has approved an application from blockchain-based financial service provider Telcoin to become the state’s first Digital Asset Depository Institution.
This conditional approval brings Telcoin Bank, which is focused on digital assets, a step closer to becoming the first regulated crypto bank in the US. Its upcoming launch hopes to disrupt the $200billion stablecoin market and create a bridge between traditional finance and cryptocurrencies.
Telcoin Bank is scheduled to launch operations early this year, when it releases the first bank-issued stablecoin, dubbed ‘eUSD’, as the backbone of its broader multi-currency digital cash strategy.
Telcoin Bank plans to offer fully regulated, bank-issued ‘Digital Cash’ stablecoins, alongside a suite of blockchain banking products and services. Ultimately, it hopes to accelerate the adoption of crypto in mainstream finance and provide enhanced access to digital financial services for mobile phone users worldwide.
“This approval marks a major milestone for Telcoin and the entire US crypto industry,” said Paul Neuner, founder and CEO of Telcoin. “I’ve always believed that the key to making crypto usable in payments and mainstream finance is a digital asset bank with native connections to the existing financial system.”
Neuner points out that while Wyoming and the OCC did issue three charters previously, none of them have been able to gain access to the Fed payment system. “The Nebraska charter creates an actual bank charter, and the first that is explicitly authorised to connect consumers to DeFi,” he added.
In accordance with the Nebraska Financial Innovation Act, which Telcoin helped draft and passed into law in 2021, Telcoin Bank will be authorised to take any cryptocurrency deposits, facilitate DeFi staking programmes, as well as provision digital asset loans.
Telcoin Group is headquartered in Singapore, while its subsidiaries are registered as a European virtual asset service provider in Lithuania and as a money services business in the United States, Canada, as well as Australia.
