For most people, money is scattered. A checking account sits in one place and a card in another. There is a brokerage app, a crypto exchange, and a lender who has never met them. Each piece works. Nothing works together.
We started Longstone because we do not think the answer is another app. An app that sits on top of someone else’s bank can show you a better screen. It cannot hold your deposit or make a lending decision, and it does not answer for the result. Only a bank does those things. So we are building one.
That has meant doing the work in the right order. Our team has written the software a modern bank runs on, from account opening and real-time payments to lending against Bitcoin, seamless conversion to and from stablecoins, and the tools bank staff will work in. It is in testing now. We are in the process of acquiring a full-service, OCC-chartered, FDIC-insured bank, and we intend to bring the platform into service on that bank’s charter once regulators approve.
We are career bankers. Our executives have spent decades inside large institutions and have seen what careful banking looks like. We intend to keep that discipline and pair it with products people have been asking for, such as Bitcoin held and borrowed against inside a bank.
Longstone is not a bank today. Once regulators approve, we want it to be the place where a customer’s financial life comes back together.
Gene A. Grant II, Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer