This week, Agora filed its application for Agora National Trust Bank with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). We’ve been building toward this for a while.
Two years in
In a few months, Agora hits its two-year anniversary of operating a stablecoin issuance business. That’s a short time to be building something that touches financial infrastructure, and a long time to be heads down in the work.
When we started, the goal was simple: issue a stablecoin that institutions and the best onchain capital teams could trust and use. Real utility for businesses trying to move money across borders, manage payroll, and handle payments. Real compliance.
We built that and AUSD is live. AUSD has done tens of billions in transfer volume and it’s delivered utility across a breadth of applications and use cases.
Agora is currently operating in Bermuda with a full license. That regulatory foundation has allowed us to build, scale, and service customers globally. This next step is about opening the door to the US market under a unified federal framework.
Your ceiling is someone else’s floor
We’ve always believed that if you want to build something that matters in financial infrastructure, you have to control your own regulatory relationship and your own infrastructure. If you don’t, your ceiling is always set by someone who does.
Securing a national trust bank charter would change that. It creates a direct, unified relationship with federal regulators. It means the rules we operate under are defined and built for scale. It also means we would offer a comprehensive suite of regulated financial products to US customers under a single federal framework.
What it unlocks
For the last few months, we’ve been heads down preparing a suite of products that go beyond stablecoin issuance. Settlement infrastructure, treasury management, fiat connectivity, tools that let businesses interact with digital dollars with the same operational simplicity as a bank account, just faster and more capable. We’ve been building toward a full financial operating system for the next generation of global business.
The charter is the regulatory layer that makes all of that possible at scale. Operating without a US federal charter means renting the rails in the world’s most important financial market.
More on the product side soon.
Be the metal
We have a saying at Agora: you are the metal, or you lose.
What that means, practically, is that we don’t build on top of other people’s infrastructure if we believe we need to build it to win. We’ve built our own stablecoin infrastructure. And now, we’re pursuing our own bank charter.
Every time you outsource a piece of the stack, you’re handing someone else leverage over your ceiling. The companies that win in financial infrastructure are the ones that control the full stack. The ones that don’t, end up dependent on the margins and decisions of the companies that do.
We want to change how money moves around the world. To do so, you need to be the metal.
Nick van Eck
CEO and Co-Founder