Uh-oh! The crypto collapse has reached the real financial system

Liquidity trouble? | Illustration by William Joel / The Verge

Update, March 8th, 7PM ET: Silvergate has announced it is shutting down, the original story follows below.

Update, March 12th, 8PM ET: Federal regulators announced that Signature Bank has also been shut down.

Silvergate, one of the most important banks in crypto, is in big trouble. Maybe existential trouble.

Silvergate didn’t start in crypto. It started in real estate. But in January 2014, the bank jumped into Bitcoin, a volatile year — Bitcoin started the year at $770 and closed above $300 in December. “Some of the companies that were being formed at the time to provide services to this budding Bitcoin space, many of them were struggling to find and maintain bank accounts,” said Silvergate CEO Alan Lane in a June 2022 episode of the Odd...

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