政府接管 Signature Bank 内幕
- Scott Shay 的核心观点是，政府接管 Signature Bank 时，银行拥有充足的流动性和资本，算术其实极其简单：「我们有340亿美元现金和流动性，周五遭遇了180亿美元挤兑……就连穴居人都可能算得出34-18=16。」 周末，银行又筹得200亿美元，“但令人难以置信的是，银行还是被接管了。”他留给听众的问题是：“你告诉我，这到底是因为什么。”
- Shay 表示，美联储加息与 Signature 倒闭毫无关系。 Signature 在2023年3月1日提交的资产负债表——距离接管还不到两周——按市值计价仍为正，因为“有一件事我很确定……就是利率会继续上升”。他批评金融媒体报道“杂乱且草率”，没有核对申报文件，并建议读读 Nick Carter 关于 Choke Point 2.0 的研究。
- 这场讨论指向一种可能的监管背景：监管机构对加密货币抱有敌意，但 Shay 没有给出接管的确定原因。 他说 Silvergate 被关闭是因为“他们不喜欢加密货币”；Signature 则主动拥抱加密业务，截至2022年底，其 Signet 系统处理的资金约达1万亿美元，而该行当年税前利润接近20亿美元。
- 他的最新创业项目 N3XT，是吸取此次接管教训后打造的一家全额准备金银行。 所有存款都配置在期限极短的美国国债中——“不是回购，也不是什么别的东西”——每笔存款都直接对应政府信用，因此按他的设计，不需要25万美元存款保险，也不需要最后贷款人。N3XT 面向企业客户；Shay 表示任何企业都可以开户，而且项目已经正式上线。
- Shay 提出的核心命题是：“全额准备金银行业务是一场时机已经成熟的革命”（nonfractional banking is a revolution whose time has come）。 一些会议参与者正在与传统金融巨头银行整合，N3XT 则采用区块链核心账本，并声称遵循 Satoshi 的愿景：“当你在 N3XT 转移1美元时……你转移的确实是1美元，而不是一个付款承诺。”
- 这段职业履历，是他提出上述主张的资格背书。 Shay 于1988年与 Lou Ranieri 创办 Bank United of Texas；政府将这家约15亿美元、陷入困境的银行的资产补到与负债相等后，他以几乎为零的价格买下，并在出售前将其做大到200亿美元以上，如今它已成为 JPMorgan Chase 的一部分。他还创办了 Merrick Bank，参与打造 Camden Property Trust 的前身，并将 Signature 从2001年5月1日成立时一路做大到1100亿美元资产，期间没有进行任何收购。他的建议是：“做生意几乎什么都能扛过去，唯独糟糕的合伙人不行。”
- 他拒绝透露是谁下令接管——“我有怀疑对象，但不会公开说”——即便主持人 Avi Felman 不断拿一个与“Loren”押韵的名字引他开口。 Shay 说自己被要求作证，并告诉对方“这家银行本不该被接管”，但他说没有人继续追问，记者也没有。
1. 所罗门兄弟、Lou Ranieri 与合伙人规则
- Shay 在 Liar’s Poker 时代进入 Salomon Brothers，从事银行并购。他曾在 Michael Lewis 参加的培训班上讲授备考会计；书一出版，他就买了第一版，“确保书里没有提到我”。当被问到 Salomon 是否真像书中写的那么疯狂时，他回答：“是。”
- Shay 说，Ranieri 是 Liar’s Poker 中唯一被正面描写的人，后来也成为他一生的合伙人。Shay 回忆，Ranieri 曾强迫一名交易员把客户一笔几乎无风险交易的3%价差退回去，因为“我不会让你这个交易员从中赚一分钱”。
- 另一个例子是，Shay 和 Ranieri 收购了一批违约信用卡贷款，约定如果回报率超过25% IRR，还要支付额外款项。卖方银行倒闭后，这批资产先后转手给大约5家继任银行。最终资产清算并实现巨额利润后，Ranieri 找到继任银行，把这笔钱交了回去。“他就是一分钱不属于自己的钱都不肯拿。”
- Shay 给年轻听众的建议是：“做生意几乎什么都能扛过去，唯独糟糕的合伙人不行。”找到一个与你“完全合拍”的伙伴，是“你能做出的最重要决定”。
2. 从 Bank United 走到 Signature：网点过密、银行服务不足
- Shay 离开 Salomon、追随 Ranieri 后，于1988年买下 Bank United of Texas——这是一家约15亿美元、陷入困境的德州银行，曾大量押注于不断下跌的房地产。政府出资让其资产与负债相等，随后 Shay 与合伙人以“基本为零”的价格买下银行，并将其做大到200亿美元以上后出售。该行后来又被转手，如今已成为 JPMorgan Chase 的一部分。在此期间，Shay 还创办了 Merrick Bank，并参与打造 Camden Property Trust 的前身。
- Signature 于2001年5月1日由 Shay、Joe DePaolo 和 John Tamburlaine 创办，建立在这样一个判断上：“纽约网点太多，但银行服务不足。”大型银行服务超大型企业和大众零售客户，却不太愿意响应中型企业市场。它的销售话术是：“你打不通 Jamie Dimon 的电话，但能打给我”——快速给出答案，包括快速说不。
- Shay 最引以为傲的证明是：Signature 最终做到1100亿美元资产，“从未进行过一次收购……完全靠有机增长”。它的扩张方式是增加人员，而不是收购客户或另一家银行。
3. 加密货币转向与 Signet
- Shay 的顿悟时刻出现在2013年，当时他被密码学与区块链的交汇深深吸引。他将区块链的潜力与 Fidelity、FIS、Fiserv 和 Jack Henry 等老牌服务商进行对比，称后者仍在使用“70年代和80年代的 COBOL 和 C++”。他上 CNBC 时给自己的定位是“区块链至上主义者”：“我不确定 Bitcoin，但我确定区块链。”
- 到2019年，他已经打造出 Signet，并将其称为首个支持区块链、全天候运行的资金转账系统。截至2022年底，约1万亿美元资金经由该系统流转；Signature 当年税前利润接近20亿美元。Felman 证实了它对客户的吸引力：“我们是一个非常满意的客户”，主要原因是几乎没有其他银行愿意为加密业务提供银行服务。
4. 接管事件：Shay 认为 Signature 具备流动性与充足资本
- Shay 的“穴居人金融学”论证从 Silvergate 被政府关闭开始——他回忆，原因是“他们不喜欢加密货币”，时间大概是“周二还是哪天来着”。Signature 遭遇挤兑的前一天，该行当季存款还在增长，并宣布拥有340亿美元现金和流动性。周五的180亿美元挤兑，发生在 Silicon Valley Bank 已经实际耗尽资金之后：“34减18等于16。”Signature 随后在周末筹得200亿美元，但“银行还是被接管了”；Shay 说，当时银行“资本充足”。
- 对于加息导致银行倒闭的说法，Shay 表示：“美联储加息与这一切毫无关系。”Signature 2023年3月1日的申报按市值计价为正。他批评记者没有做最基本的工作——核对财务报表——并建议阅读 Nick Carter 的文章，称文章标题他记得大概是《Signature Bank 本不必死》。
- Shay 称，银行被接管是他人生中“最创伤性”的时期；但他把这与父母去世区分开来，因为那时他知道自己最终会走出来。他说，政府拥有“一整套纠缠并摧毁他人的机制”，这就是政府的“超能力”。不久之后，他左眼的神经也开始恶化。挤兑发生当周周五原定安装的牙科植体最终没有装上；他把它称作自己的“纹身”，作为提醒。
- Shay 说自己被要求作证，并告诉对方“这家银行本不该被接管”，但没有人继续追问，记者也没有。当被问到是谁作出决定时，他回答：“我有怀疑对象，但不会公开说。”Felman 抛出一个与“Loren”押韵的名字，Shay 没有确认。
5. N3XT：用全额准备金银行模式绕开 Choke Point
- Shay 认为，Choke Point 1.0 和 2.0 都是通过部分准备金银行体系运作的。他举例说，5名存款人各存入10美元，银行贷出40美元，而所有人都以为自己仍然拥有那10美元。因此，一旦发生压力事件，就需要最后贷款人。由于存款保险只覆盖25万美元，他说政府可以撤回保险，“任何一天都能在完全不提前通知的情况下直接关掉一家银行”，而且没有救济渠道。
- Shay 与 Jeffrey Wallace、Orel Bonnell 和 Kyle O’Donnell 共同创办 N3XT。他说，N3XT 将每笔存款都配置在期限极短的美国国债中——“不是回购，也不是什么别的东西”——并保留对应国债的确切凭证。他认为，这比货币市场基金更好，因为银行可以直接拿出国债本身，让存款直接享有政府信用，也就不再需要25万美元存款保险。他还承诺提供全天候支付，支付体验的美感比 Signet 过去高10倍。
- Shay 将 N3XT 与会议上其他正在接入传统金融巨头的参与者作对比——“JPMorgan 到处都是”。N3XT 则把核心账本建在区块链上，记录不可篡改；他表示，这遵循 Satoshi 反对部分准备金银行的愿景：“当你在 N3XT、在我们这家银行转移1美元时，你转移的确实是1美元，而不是一个付款承诺。”
- Shay 表示，N3XT 面向企业客户，任何企业都可以开户；项目也已经从软启动阶段进入正式上线。他还暗示，关于 Satoshi 身份的各种猜测，可以留到另一场对话再谈。
完整逐字稿
We had $34 billion in cash and liquidity, and on Friday we had an $18 billion run. But you can do the arithmetic. Even cavemen could probably do 34 minus 18 equals 16. Then, over the weekend—and this is public—we raised $20 billion.
Right.
And astonishingly, the bank was taken.
Right.
So you tell me what it was about.
We've got a fun one. This is a little bit different from the markets talk, but it's going to be interesting. We've got Scott Shay here, who's the founder of Next, a new-age bank, who's been in this sector for a long time and can tell us whatever we need to know about it. Thank you, Scott, for coming on the show. This is fun.
Yes, it's nice to be the 2,000-year-old man.
Tell us a little bit about your career. You are a lifelong—I don't know if you'd consider yourself a lifelong banker, but maybe tell us a little bit about where you started and where you are now.
Yeah, I guess I became a bank nerd.
Yeah.
I founded the first bank with Lou Ranieri, who some of your listeners may know.
Wait, he's the guy from the book?
He is.
From Liar's Poker?
He is one of my closest friends.
Really?
And he was the only person portrayed favorably in Liar's Poker.
Yeah, no, that's—how'd you meet him?
1. Inside Salomon Brothers
I started my career on Wall Street, at Salomon Brothers.
Okay.
If anybody remembers Salomon Brothers from those days, it was a legendary firm. I actually met Lou for the first time because I was working in bank M&A. I was the bank deal guy. He was on the desk, and famously, Lou was promoted from the mailroom, so he truly came from the bottom. He asked me to help out on a deal. One of his clients was doing M&A, so I went to help him, and from then on, we became lifelong friends.
Oh, wow. So tell me about the—
And partners.
So you were recruited for Salomon Brothers—
Yes.
—in bank M&A?
Yes.
Was it—was it—
Or M&A.
Is it as crazy as—
Liar's Poker?
Like Liar's Poker. But was it—
I was—
Was Liar's Poker real? Because you were kind of there at the same time.
Not only that, but I was actually taught—I had only been at Salomon Brothers for a couple of years, but I ended up being the teacher for the training class that Michael Lewis was in.
Oh, no way. So what does being the teacher involve?
I had to teach them how to do pro formas, which none of them got. None of them understood. They didn't know why they were doing it. They were bond salesmen, but for some reason, I was the Portia McGehee that was supposed to teach them about bond, about bank pro forma accounting.
Right. I guess you were hiring people from across the board, so they weren't taught this in college. Now, when you apply for a bank role, you've got to know all this stuff already.
Yeah. It was fun, and it was the era. When Liar's Poker first came out, this was in the old days when they still had Barnes & Noble and all these bookstores. I went out and literally bought a first edition of the book. As soon as it came out, I bought one and paged through it to make sure that I wasn't mentioned. I was so happy I wasn't mentioned.
Yeah.
But I was there for 1 or 2 of the events.
There were a lot of people who got called out and had shots fired at them in that book. What's funny about the media sometimes is that they try to paint something in an unfavorable light, and that ends up making you want it more.
Yeah.
Liar's Poker and The Wolf of Wall Street are great examples of this.
Yeah. Well—
They tried to make him look bad, and they actually made him look like the coolest guy on the planet.
Yeah. Lou came out looking good.
Yeah, Lou did.
He always did the right thing by clients, and there are very few people on Wall Street who will always do that. One of the stories I was there for was when someone made too big a spread on a trade for a client. They were trading basically a riskless trade, and they made 3%.
Mm-hmm.
Lou said, “You've got to give all the money back. I'm not going to let you, as a trader, make a penny.” The trader was aghast, and half the firm was aghast, but Lou did that. I saw him do it other times. You learn about people that way.
As a segue—and this isn't what we're here to talk about—one time, I later became partners with him, and we bought a portfolio of defaulted credit cards. We ended up making a ton of money. The people who were selling it to us—the bank was in trouble—said, “We know you're going to make a lot of money on this, but give us 25% of the amount you make over, if you make over a 25% IRR.”
So we said fine. That bank ended up not making it. It was sold to another bank, then sold to another bank, and it was about 5 banks later that we'd liquidated the portfolio and made a gazillion dollars. We couldn't find anybody to give the money to.
Mm-hmm.
Lou said, “We're going to send somebody to whoever the successor bank was, and we're just going to hand them a check.” That was the kind of guy Lou was. He just would not take a penny that wasn't his.
But did anything end up coming out of that, or was it purely out of goodness? I mean, I can't imagine it was purely out of goodness.
No, nothing came out of it. It was purely out of goodness. That's Lou Ranieri.
That's pretty—I mean, nobody was like that on the Street, definitely not back then. These were the days of Gordon Gekko, right? Greed is good.
Yes.
So—
And he was just a totally different guy. He could have a good time, too.
Right.
Don't get me wrong.
Was it as crazy as everyone says?
Yes.
Yeah?
Yes.
You guys were going out and taking Manhattan by storm.
I didn't do that.
Okay.
I just want to let you know.
Fair enough.
I didn't do that. I also tell my children I didn't drink beer in college.
Is that really—
I just want to be sure you know that. I want to go on the record: I did not drink any beer in college.
That's good. That's going to be a great clip. We're going to clip that. We're going to say, “Former Salomon trader says he did not drink beer in college.”
Right.
No, this is important stuff.
There were no polygraph tests on this.
No polygraph tests—
Okay, good.
Trust me. Just—
Okay.
People will be able to see you, but that's it.
Right.
How about this? You leave Salomon Brothers and start a bank—
Yeah.
—with Lou Ranieri. Tell me about that process. What was it like? I don't know, was everyone starting banks in—
No.
—or what was this?
No. It had never been a thing.
Exactly. I say that kind of knowing the answer, but it's tough to start a bank.
Right. It's not easy. We started it in December '30. We started Bank United of Texas in 1988, and it was about a $1.5 billion bank. We bought it as a distressed bank, and we turned it into a $20 billion bank—maybe more, actually, by the time we sold it. It ended up getting sold and sold again. Today, of course, it's part of JPMorgan Chase.
Mm-hmm. Yes.
Then we started another bank called Merrick Bank, which is a credit card bank.
I want to get into that, though.
Yeah.
So you bought a distressed bank.
Yes.
What was wrong with it? What was the issue you were looking at? What were they failing to do properly?
In that bank, the basic issue was that it was a Texas bank that had lent heavily on real estate, and the real estate was worth a lot less than what they had lent. It was the classic case: the assets weren't worth the liabilities. The government had to put in money to make the assets equal to the liabilities. Then we bought it basically at zero.
Assets equal liabilities, and then it was on us to succeed or not succeed.
Why would you leave Salomon to go buy a bank that’s going under?
I left Salomon to follow Lou. The one thing in life that I learned—and I don’t know who all of your viewers are—is that if you find a business partner who you’re totally simpatico with and trust, you’re going to figure out how to make money.
Mm-hmm.
Or you’re at least going to enjoy each other’s company.
You’re going to have a good time.
You’re going to have a good time.
You’re going to have a good time.
Lou and I were totally simpatico. He was the big-picture guy at that point, and I was the guy executing. We ended up doing a lot. We bought Bank United of Texas, and we started the forerunner of a large real estate investment trust.
That wasn’t even a thing back then. REITs were kind of—so you’re saying you built one of the first ones?
We built one, yeah.
That was one of the first.
Yeah. Camden Property Trust became one of the largest multifamily companies. We also identified and worked with the 2 partners who founded it, and partnership is so critical. I can’t overstate that.
Yeah.
Finding the right partner in business and in life is enormous.
Right. Was it the fairness of Lou that drew you to him? When you look for a partner, what would you say to our viewers? I think a lot of them are on the younger side, probably under the age of 35 and reasonably successful, but at some point they probably want to start a business.
Right.
What would you say to them?
First of all, I would say it is the most important decision you can make. You can survive almost anything in business except having a bad partner. You really can’t survive that.
Lou and I both knew that, and there were other partners. We had a partner, Bob Pearre, as well. We all knew who was great, and we all knew that we didn’t have to look behind our backs. I had his back, and he had my back. We were only going to make decisions that were ethical, that we were going to be able to look at each other and look at ourselves in the mirror. I gave you 1 example that may have been overboard, right? There was literally—
Yeah.
There was nobody who was connected to that deal, but that’s definitely the tone at the top.
That’s amazing. I wasn’t expecting to get good life advice. I knew you were a smart guy, but this is actually pretty interesting stuff. Sometimes these conversations take turns. I want to get back to where you were. You bought this distressed bank out of Texas.
Yeah.
You turned it from basically nothing into a $20 billion bank.
Yeah.
And then you started to think to yourself, “What’s next?” Is that right?
That’s right.
Okay. What came next after that?
2. Launching Signature Bank
Just before we sold it, I was already thinking about Signature Bank. We didn’t have a name for it, but I thought New York was over-branched and under-banked.
This was at a time when Lou had done a lot, and he was going off in some other directions. He became chairman of Computer Associates, which at the time was a huge company—really huge. So I was doing this on my own to some degree.
I found 2 other partners, in this case Joe DePaolo and John Tamburlaine, and we founded Signature Bank. The idea was just to be a midsize bank in New York that would give good service to the middle market. The big banks were really good at serving huge corporations and mass-market retail, but they weren’t really so good at that middle-market piece. We thought we could compete there, and the hypothesis proved to be true.
What did people want from banks that they weren’t getting? What could you offer them that they were struggling to find?
First of all, a return phone call.
It was that bad?
It was that bad for the middle market. Middle-market people were being forced into the branch.
Right.
I used to say to people who were potential customers, “You’re not going to be able to get Jamie Dimon on the phone, but you can get me on the phone—and somebody who can make a decision.” We could work with middle-market people, and they would get a fast response. It might not be the response they liked. It might very well be no, but they would get it fast. Nobody would be strung along, and people loved it.
The bank never did an acquisition. It grew to $110 billion in assets, all organically.
Yeah.
Never an acquisition.
Okay, that’s what I was going to say. Give me an example of inorganic growth.
We never made an acquisition. It was all by adding people. Everybody who came in the door wanted to be there. They weren’t clients acquired from another bank. That’s what I mean by organic growth.
Right.
I’m extremely proud of that. So, by definition, we didn’t have any unhappy clients.
That’s pretty amazing. When did you start Signature? What year?
May 1, 2001.
May 1, 2001. Signature lasted for quite some time.
It should be here today.
But something crazy happened.
Yeah.
After the Fed decided to hike rates through the roof, potentially sinking your business. Can you take us through what happened at the end?
The Fed hiking rates had nothing to do with anything.
Okay.
Here’s what I would say. People often ask, “When did your Bitcoin moment happen? When did the penny drop?” You see my metaphors here? For me, it was 2013.
3. Signature Embraces Blockchain
I started to read about the confluence of cryptography and blockchain, because Bitcoin wouldn’t work without both of them really having gotten to a certain state. I became really captivated by blockchain, and I thought, “We have Fidelity, FIS, Fiserv, and Jack Henry. They’re using COBOL and C++ from the ’70s and ’80s. If we could use blockchain, we could have 24/7 payments of money.”
Mm-hmm.
In 2013, I was on CNBC at the closing bell, I think, and I was talking about how I was a blockchain maximalist. I wasn’t sure about Bitcoin, but I was sure about blockchain.
So we made the bank crypto-friendly.
Yeah.
That was really the issue. By 2019, I had created this thing called Signet.
Mm-hmm.
Signet was—and many of your listeners, anybody who was around then, will know Signet because it was the first 24/7 blockchain-enabled money transfer system, and it was enormously successful. By the end of 2022, it had around $1 trillion pass through it.
We actually used it as well. We were banking with Signature.
So you were 1 happy client.
We were a very happy client, mainly because nobody else would bank us.
So—
In crypto, it was very difficult back in the day. You had Silvergate and Signature, and basically everybody else said, “We can’t touch crypto,” which maybe we’ve learned in hindsight was actually part of the government’s policy, but—
I think it was the—
In 2022, we earned pretax almost $2 billion.
This is where I wanted to get into it—
Yeah.
because you said it had nothing to do with the Fed raising rates.
Nothing to do with the Fed raising rates.
But the mini-banking crisis did have something to do with a lot of banks having a mismatch between assets and liabilities, locking in rates too low.
Absolutely.
But you’re saying you didn’t.
We didn’t.
You specifically.
I mean—
Would you agree that the general crisis was part of the reason for the downfall?
First of all, you could use your favorite LLM.
Right.
You probably need Cursor. You're probably going to take a little bit of agent work, but you could find which companies had a mark-to-market loss. There were a lot of banks that had enormous mark-to-market negative net worths. If you look at the balance sheet of Signature, which was filed March 1, 2023—less than 2 weeks before—it was mark-to-market positive. One thing that was clear to me, and I think to others, was that rates were going to go up.
Right.
So we didn't go there. But there's a lot of slop. One thing I've really learned, and it's so profoundly disappointing, is how haphazard and careless most journalists are. They didn't do any work.
Really?
It was so easy. All you had to do was look at the filing, the financial statement filing. Was the company mark-to-market? What was it? Well, it was mark-to-market positive. So that's not an issue. Instead, they just report whatever—I don't know—somebody told them.
Right. Financial journalism has a lot of problems, I think, mainly because they actually don't understand finance.
Might be.
4. The Signature Bank Takeover
So let me give you another caveman finance example. The day before Signature, Silvergate was shut by the government because they didn't like crypto, on a Tuesday or something. Then, on Thursday—the day before—we were up in deposits for the quarter. We had issued a press release saying we had $34 billion in cash.
Mm-hmm.
On Friday, I was literally taking off to have a dental implant. It's my tattoo in a certain kind of way, in that I haven't had the dental implant put in place. It's staying there as a reminder.
Oh, so you never got back to it.
I never got the dental implant.
But I'm feeling it as you're saying it. Yeah. I never had it put in.
That's incredible.
I don't do tattoos, but that's my tattoo. We announced that we had $34 billion in cash and liquidity. On Friday, we had an $18 billion run after Silicon Valley Bank really did run out of money. You can do arithmetic. Even cavemen could probably do $34 billion minus $18 billion equals $16 billion. They might have pictures of bones, but they'd still get it.
Right, right. Sure.
Then, over the weekend, again, this was public, we raised $20 billion.
Right.
And astonishingly, the bank was taken. So you tell me what it was about. We had plenty of capital.
I'll give you a chance—
Plenty of capital.
—to address a rumor—
Yeah.
—that it was because you guys were banking the mafia. I don't know if you ever heard this. This is a real rumor that went around.
This is a real thing.
This is a real rumor that went around: Signature was shut down because you guys were banking the mafia.
I'm astounded. I didn't even hear that rumor. Nobody's been able to say that to my face, no.
Yeah, no, that rumor was being passed around. It's crazy, I think. What do you think of this guy, Nick Carter, who's written a lot about bank choke point 2.0?
Yeah.
Do you think—
I suggest people read Nick Carter.
Yeah.
He was one of the few people who wrote an article about Signature.
Right.
You can Google it or put it into your LLM and ask about it, but it said Signature—I can't remember the name exactly—but it was something like “Signature Bank Didn't Have to Die.”
What was it like on the day you got that news? How did you get the news in the first place that Signature was being taken?
That period was literally the most traumatic in my life. When I lost my parents, those were really, really, really, really bad days. Both deaths were sadly unexpected, but I knew I'd get better.
Yeah.
But when the government did what it did, there was a point where you don't know what to do. The government has this whole mechanism for hounding and destroying people. They're really good at it. That's the superpower of government.
And that's the whole reason why Satoshi came up with—
Superpower.
Satoshi came up with, uh—he wanted to, he thought he had answers. I was so crushed. I ended up having a left-knee replacement shortly after the nerve in my left eye started to deteriorate. Thank God, I was fine with it.
It's so dramatic.
I don't know if I'm oversharing, but it's all this stuff. It was really traumatic.
Who in the world, if you had put the question to me—it wasn't Kalshi in those days—and asked me to bet on the point that I'd be testifying before the House and the Senate—
I had to testify. I said, “By the way, the bank shouldn't have been taken,” which nobody followed up on either. Nor did any reporter. I would have given that zero odds. I literally probably would have made you an almost infinite bet the other way.
Right.
And then all this stuff happens, and it's just—I shudder, you know?
Do you know who made the decision to take the bank?
I have suspicions, but I'm not going on the record.
Okay.
I'm not going on there.
Fair enough. Fair enough.
Yes.
I thought I could have a fun one there. Does it rhyme with Loren? Is the last name something that rhymes with Loren?
I will lead you.
We'll let the listeners figure that out. He didn't say anything. I said it. I said it. Maybe we'll end on a happy note.
Yes.
So after all that, you're back on your feet now.
Absolutely.
You're absolutely back on your feet, and you're starting something new—
It's going to be so much better.
—which just so happens to be a bank.
Yes.
So tell us about that.
So let me tell you about it.
Yeah.
5. The Nonfractional Banking Revolution
I believe you learn from everything. If I could give one other piece of life advice, it's that you learn from everything. If you don't, you're making a mistake. Even things—I didn't think there was anything I could learn. I thought I was just going to have to get over this. But I learned: How did Choke Point 1.0 and 2.0 work? Fractional banking.
It works because—how does a healthy bank get taken over? It's because you need some government entity to say you're insured, that there's a lender of last resort. Every bank that everybody here deals with works this way: You put in $10, so do 4 other people. They lend out $40 of it, and everybody thinks they have the same $10. So if there's ever a day of stress, you need a lender of last resort. Silicon Valley Bank needed one; we didn't.
Right.
Since deposits are insured to $250,000, the government can just say, “We're withdrawing insurance.” They can shut a bank literally with no notice any day, and there's no recourse.
Totally.
What I wanted to do, and what I've done with my 3 co-founders—Jeffrey Wallace, Orel Bonnell, and Kyle O'Donnell—is start a bank that meets more of Satoshi's initial definition of how you can do a real bank. We take all the money that everybody deposits in the bank and put it in very short Treasuries—not repo, not anything else. We're better than a money-market fund because we have the exact receipt for the Treasury, so we can present it to the Treasury. There's no need for $250,000 because we have the direct government credit on all deposits.
Then we can do 24/7 payments anywhere, any place, any time, safely and securely—10x better in terms of beauty than Signet ever was. I really think this idea of nonfractional banking is a revolution whose time has come. I think we're going to do it. I really do. It's a lot of—
Even here at the conference, a lot of people are trying to integrate totally with TradFi, with the big mega-banks.
Right.
You know, JPMorgan is everywhere. I think what we're trying to do is actually much more revolutionary. We've actually stuck to Satoshi's vision, which is: when you move a dollar at N3XT, at our bank, you actually move a dollar.
Right.
You don't move a promise to pay. You don't move a promise that has a lot of contingencies behind it. You're actually moving that dollar because it's sitting on our balance sheet, never having left, never having been lent out. Just like Satoshi wanted to say, "I wanna move a whole thing of Bitcoin, not like a bank." He really hated the idea—whoever he was—
Right.
I have my theories about that, too.
You got your theories?
I've got my theories, too, but that's another—
Okay. We'll get into—
That's a totally different—
We'll get into that another time. We're going to have him back on to talk Satoshi.
But having said that—
Yeah.
He hated fractional banking. It's clear—
Right.
—from the white paper.
Right.
What we've done is removed fractional banking and brought dollars as close to Bitcoin as possible by making our core ledger a blockchain, by having everything be immutable, and by not needing a lender of last resort, so we—
Right.
—can't just be like, "Well, we don't like the tie you're wearing, or that you're not wearing a tie."
No, it's true. And remind everybody the name of the bank before we wrap up.
Yes.
N3XT—N-3-X-T.
Can I open an account yet?
Any business can. We're B2B. You can open an account. We've had a soft launch. We're now launched.
Very nice. Scott, thank you so much for coming on. This was a lot of fun. What a great conversation.