New York-based Quontic Bank proudly proclaims on its website that you can “Join Quontic In The Metaverse,” and calls its foray into virtual worlds “the first of its kind.”
Unfortunately, during my visits to this Decentraland-based bank diorama, I was the only person there — unless you count the teller or poolside DJ.
Accessing the poolside DJ requires you to first activate the ATM, something I found more difficult than anticipated due to failures in object collision detection.
Being the only person at a metaverse bank’s pool party with a DJ playing music was something I had never experienced before, and something I doubt I will experience again any time soon.
Speaking to the teller allows you to have a short conversation about some of the products that Quontic offers, including a checking account that offers rewards in bitcoin.
This appears to be referencing the ‘Bitcoin Rewards Checking’ product that allowed customers to earn Bitcoin from spending using a debit card.
However, despite the teller suggesting to me that I check out this account, it’s no longer something Quontic offers. Visiting the page linked in the original press release for this product will inform you that “Registration has been disabled.”
Aaron Wollner, the chief marketing officer for Quontic noted that, “unfortunately, due to a variety of external factors we made the difficult decision to discontinue our Bitcoin Rewards Checking program.” It isn’t clear what those external factors are.
Looking around the metaverse bank outpost, you can see a few posters that serve as hyperlinks to various pages on Quontic’s non-metaverse website.
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Among these posters is one that advertises ‘Lite Documentation Loans’ for ‘Non-Traditional Borrowers.’ Quontic was the first community development financial institution (CDFI) that could make loans using alternative documentation, including for verification of income.
One report from Maine Wire has alleged that this type of loan has been used by illegal cannabis grow operations, with the paper allegedly identifying 69 such operations that received mortgages from Quontic.
The bank has had other issues recently, with the Office of the Comptroller of Currency filing a cease and desist order in October 2022, five months after the blog post announcing the metaverse outpost. The order alleges “unsafe or unsound practices” and “violations of law, rule or regulation.”
While Quontic has been focused on coming into compliance, it seems to have left its outpost in the metaverse languishing and promoting advertising products that no longer exist.