The Dollar Is the World's Best Product: Augustus Raised $180M to Distribute It

A rare charter

Co-founder and CEO Ferdinand says the OCC Charter approval is the eighth conditional approval since 2010 for a full-service de novo national bank, calling it "still this very, very rare thing." He counts four that have gone live since 2010, naming Grasshopper, Vero and Erebor alongside Augustus Bank.

To run the bank, Augustus Bank hired Craig Qualls, who Ferdinand says spent twenty years at the OCC and was CEO of Green Dot Bank, H and R Block Bank and United Texas Bank. It also hired Benjamin Alexander, formerly chief compliance officer at Column Bank, who earlier led compliance for HSBC's clearing business.

The dollar thesis

Ferdinand calls the dollar "the best product in the history of the world" and says there is nearly infinite demand for it outside the US. He argues correspondent banking relationships have been shrinking for the last twenty years, and that the world's 160 currencies should be much closer to 16.

Clearing from the Fed up

Ferdinand describes a full-stack model in which Augustus Bank pays dollars itself at the Federal Reserve, giving it "full control over what's happening." The company already clears euros, counts Kraken among its clearing customers, and Ferdinand describes it as the best euro clearer in the world.

The operating layer is Marble, a proprietary core banking system that Ferdinand calls "a technology native bank core" built around intelligence. Target customers are global fintechs: crypto exchanges, OTC desks, cross-border stablecoin companies, stablecoin neobanks and traditional neobanks.

Where the money goes

Ferdinand says the Series B will fund the bank itself, engineering on Marble, and go-to-market. As part of that push he is hiring the first direct salesperson for the Augustus Bank office in New York City.