According to a report by the Nevada independent, the founder of Blockchain incubation and investment firm Blockchains.com; Jeffrey Berns, has bought a small community bank in Las Vegas, Nevada.
The report has it that the Blockchains.com founder acquired the community bank in order to fund his crypto startup dreams. Bern’s reasoning is that his ambitions are incompatible with the current financial system, and he feared that the same system would cut off his capital supply.
The 56 year old attorney has been eyeing crypto for a while with his initial plans being the construction of a Blockchain focused smart city, and an e-sports arena in the Nevada desert. As for now, he has confirmed the $28 million acquisition of the Kirkwood Bank of Nevada, which according to the Nevada independent report; is a “is a small but critical step in helping the nascent company achieve its wildly ambitious goals,”
Berns does not just need the company to finance his decentralized dreams; he hopes the bank will become one of the leading names and a big institution for the Blockchain industry. Bern explained his goal with this project to be;
It’s to create an environment where the Blockchain ecosystem, the legitimate businesses out there who are trying to build projects that are going to empower the individual and better the world… have a bank that understands what they’re doing and isn’t fearful,”. “Banks are hesitant, because if this takes off, you don’t need banks anymore. They become obsolete,”
Bern’s latest acquisition was done through a separate holding company in order to mitigate the reporting and ownership responsibilities. He also said that he planned to decentralize his companies in the future, a plan that he thinks will be resisted by regulators. He added that he may attempt limited integration of Blockchains to create a sandbox to test his financial technology and Blockchain ideas.
Berns revealed that he badly needed a playground to test out his ideas. “I needed a place to do proof-of-concept with regulators to show that loans can be done in such a way that if I have $1,000, I could invest 10 cents in 10,000 loans and, it would all be done on the Blockchain and micro payments would be made, and there’s no funny business.”
Berns began to negotiate for the bank takeover in February of last year after spending a year in search of a banking partner. $25 million was paid for the bank takeover, with an extra $3 million being an additional investment. This is the first time that the bank is changing ownership since its founding in 2008. It has $86.6 million worth of assets and 9.14 percent return on equity in 2019 according to the FDIC, which really shows its potential.
According to the acquired bank’s president John Dru, there will be no changes as far as the directors and the account numbers will not change. He even added that customers will not see any changes in the institution. Bern’s next move reportedly is to acquire a 3D printing company to print a portion of his Blockchain city.
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