[HN Gopher] Silvergate Bank to Begin Voluntary Liquidation
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Silvergate Bank to Begin Voluntary Liquidation
 
Author : pg_bot
Score  : 50 points
Date   : 2023-03-08 21:38 UTC (1 hours ago)
 
web link (dfpi.ca.gov)
w3m dump (dfpi.ca.gov)
 
| LatteLazy wrote:
| This is a real pity.
 
  | madballster wrote:
  | Why - unless you're being sarcastic? Looks to me like the
  | system is working Early warning system pushed the bank to
  | unwind positions before hurting depositors. Regulation appears
  | to be working well, for once.
 
  | elkos wrote:
  | How so?
 
    | Scoundreller wrote:
    | My guess is the loss of a crypto on/off-ramp in USA.
 
| dzdt wrote:
| Good context by Matt Levine a few days ago [1]. Basically
| Silvergate did a lot of business with crypto firms and got burned
| not by crypto speculation but just by holding long maturity safe
| assets when too many of their customers wanted to withdraw money
| on a short term basis. The result was falling below the line of
| being "well capitalised" as a bank. Bank regulation seems to be
| working here: there is no indication of wrongdoing or losses to
| depositors...
| 
| [1]
| https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-03-02/silver...
 
  | rkagerer wrote:
  | [1] https://archive.is/yH1A5
 
  | londons_explore wrote:
  | > holding long maturity safe assets
  | 
  | I thought banks were able to sell those long maturity assets
  | for cash to another bank or investor to avoid exactly that kind
  | of situation?
  | 
  | And my understanding is banks must meet their regulatory
  | requirements overnight each night, so there is a market for
  | overnight loans/swaps/etc to make sure thats the case.
 
    | dragontamer wrote:
    | > I thought banks were able to sell those long maturity
    | assets for cash to another bank or investor to avoid exactly
    | that kind of situation?
    | 
    | Those assets dropped in value by like 20% last year. Check
    | out the stock ticker "TLT", which tracks 20+ year treasuries
    | to see just how bad it was, zoom out to 1-year or 2-years.
 
      | Octokiddie wrote:
      | That TLT story is being severely under-reported.
 
  | yieldcrv wrote:
  | Matt Levine is a good example of how writing cynically about
  | crypto matters makes you wind up correcting crypto adversaries
  | so much that you wind up coming across as a crypto proponent,
  | simply from being able to opine accurately on what's going on.
 
| colesantiago wrote:
| Good. This should destroy more confidence in crypto if it hasn't
| already.
| 
| Now that the crypto hype has pretty much died, there isn't any
| need for anything crypto at all.
| 
| A completely irrelevant and speculative industry which has no
| legit usecase other than losing people's money, the only thing
| that crypto is good at.
 
  | dylan604 wrote:
  | Web3 wants to have a word /s
 
| the_mitsuhiko wrote:
| Necessary context: Silvergate Bank was a major (by crypto
| standards) bank underpinning crypto companies.
| 
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silvergate_Bank
 
  | rippercushions wrote:
  | More to the point, Silvergate was one of exactly two banks
  | serving crypto companies in the US. The other, Signature Bank,
  | is also under a lot of regulatory pressure and it has already
  | cut off eg. Binance and Kraken.
 
    | yieldcrv wrote:
    | There will be other banks and onramps. There was a time
    | before those two banks. And there are many more institutions
    | open to the business now.
 
  | Aloha wrote:
  | Yeah, I was going off to link something similar. I was lost as
  | to relevance.
  | 
  | https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/08/silvergate-shutting-down-ope...
 
| elektor wrote:
| It's interesting to see how quickly the public interest (and
| money!) has shifted from cryptocurrency to AI.
 
  | AceJohnny2 wrote:
  | Heh, cstross even has a "conspiracy" theory about that sudden
  | shift:
  | 
  | https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2023/02/place-y...
  | 
  | (Which I don't buy)
 
    | cloudking wrote:
    | It takes about 5 minutes playing with ChatGPT to realize it
    | has real value, seems like author hasn't really tried it.
 
    | elkos wrote:
    | There are some pretty interesting ideas there. I had a
    | conversation with a friend the other day and the whole
    | blockchain then, AI now thing reminded me of a saying about
    | shelling "Picks and Shovels during a Gold Rush". I think it
    | is intriguing that GPUs are the "picks and shovels" of both
    | the Blockchain Rush and the AI Rush. One could point out
    | conspiracies and PR, another could point out that the as GPUs
    | become more general compute tools, new applications will
    | emerge.
 
  | dylan604 wrote:
  | It sounds more hip than "gotta go buy some lotto"
 
  | koolba wrote:
  | 5+% US treasuries can quickly shift the calculus for USD
  | holdings. And lack of "real" money in the system cascades
  | quickly.
 
    | dragontamer wrote:
    | Given all the economic data + extremely hawkish comments from
    | Powell yesterday/today, it looks like we're going even higher
    | than expected this year.
    | 
    | FFR futures are expecting a +0.50% increase for the March
    | 22nd meeting.
 
    | ForHackernews wrote:
    | As they say, it's only once the tide goes out that you
    | discover who's been swimming naked.
 
  | ForHackernews wrote:
  | I mean, one of them has millions of users and is poised to
  | revolutionize the entire digital economy (and perhaps the non-
  | digital one as well) and the other one is electronic chuck-E-
  | cheeze tokens older than the first iphone and still useless.
 
    | Rebelgecko wrote:
    | I love how (unintentionally?) ambiguous your comment is.
    | 
    | Crypto bros and LLM bros both monetize via tokens
 
    | bink wrote:
    | I wish I could agree with you, but there's a lot of smoke and
    | mirrors with "AI" right now. These companies are letting
    | people believe these services are thinking machines that are
    | on the verge of consciousness when they are far from it.
 
      | jkubicek wrote:
      | There's some people making outsized and unreasonable claims
      | about AI today, sure, but AI is generally useful and
      | valuable right this minute. Crypto never really made it
      | over that hump.
 
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