When mainstream banks were closing traders' accounts, Silvergate embraced cryptocurrency exchanges. Now it's gone and no mainstream banks want to take its place.
Just having to ask the question in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing is generally enough to provide the answer.
So it proved for Silvergate, the longest-standing and most important bank serving the crypto industry.
The institution has announced that its closing its doors — badly bruised after that fateful filing led to an exodus of major corporate clients… Coinbase, Gemini, Paxos and Circle among them.
"An orderly wind down of bank operations and a voluntary liquidation of the bank is the best path forward," the California-based corporation said in a statement. This would include repayment of all deposits, it added.
SIlvergate blamed "recent industry and regulatory developments" for its woes.
Those regulatory developments covered a host of issues, from a Justice Department investigation to growing moves by the Federal Reserve and other federal agencies with oversight of the banking industry pushing those institutions far away from crypto.
