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Without crypto I wouldn't be able to work as a software engineer for international companies (unless I were to work for free).
Maybe you should dig a bit deeper before making such comments
Silvergate Bank to begin voluntary liquidation
51–60 of 87 posts
Re: Silvergate Bank to begin voluntary liquidation
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
Silvergate’s assets are real boring normal stuff Their safe, boring assets weren't safe and boring enough. Why can't there be a bank like this that just keeps your cash as cash?
Not sure why people are upset with this comment. Many banks do put customer funds into T-Bills, or park it with the Fed at the fed funds rate. Both of which are 0 risk and effectively instantly redeemable. And this is still highly profitable right now, if you offer customers yields below fed funds rate (~5%), the money on the spread is risk free. Pretty much every crypto adjacent firm has decided to take excessive ri…
> if you offer customers yields below fed funds rate (~5%), the money on the spread is risk free.
Absolutely insane how my local bank's money market account interest rate is something like 1.4%. Their CDs only hit 3%. Like come the fuck on. Ended up moving most of my money out of there.
Re: Silvergate Bank to begin voluntary liquidation
#53It's interesting to see how quickly the public interest (and money!) has shifted from cryptocurrency to AI.
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)
I think indeed it’s not a conspiracy theory but just an observation of what might be happening that requires no collusion, just individual greed.
(I hence appreciated the quotes).
I am also not sure it’s so simple; the tools are so much more powerful than I would have believed just a couple years ago. But there’s value and then there’s perceived value; the fact that there’s so much nontechnical interest is perhaps suspect.
Re: Silvergate Bank to begin voluntary liquidation
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
That TLT story is being severely under-reported.
TLTs value went down because yields went up. This is by design, anyone who invested in TLT at zero rates should have known the yields to price function. Honestly i dont see whats to hide here in reporting ?? Can you explain what am i missing here ?
Many financial institutions are required by law to hold UST, some of which have suffered declines comparable to TLT. This was in part a result of regulations post-GFC.
I'm surprised there hasn't been more reporting about this. Maybe everything's fine and there's nothing to see here.
Re: Silvergate Bank to begin voluntary liquidation
#55[flagged]
Without crypto I wouldn't be able to work as a software engineer for international companies (unless I were to work for free). Maybe you should dig a bit deeper before making such comments
Yet, what crypto was supposed to do already exists in a regulated environment.
I know lots of software engineers and companies that use Wise to get paid / pay employees and contractors internationally with no issues there at all.
So crypto is still not needed here at all.
Re: Silvergate Bank to begin voluntary liquidation
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
You’re not missing anything. If you invested in mid to long duration bonds right before the Fed started rocketing rates, you had a bad time.
again, why would i put my money in bonds when the interest rates are rock bottom ? I invest in treasuries when interests are high or gonna stay high. If i see us hitting a recession in coming year, i keep mostly cash and start piling into treasuries over each hike cycle until at least the central banks start cutting rates and keep riding the treasuries till rates keep moving down. Or in other words, dont fight the fe…
You might not, but many banks and other institutions have no choice.
Re: Silvergate Bank to begin voluntary liquidation
#57[flagged]
Without crypto I wouldn't be able to work as a software engineer for international companies (unless I were to work for free). Maybe you should dig a bit deeper before making such comments
Taxes are still due even if you aren’t getting paid in USD. I don’t understand how crypto is legitimately solving a problem for you.
Re: Silvergate Bank to begin voluntary liquidation
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
Silvergate’s assets are real boring normal stuff Their safe, boring assets weren't safe and boring enough. Why can't there be a bank like this that just keeps your cash as cash?
Presumably because then they would have to charge you a percentage of your money for storage and people don’t want to pay the bank.
And for pretty good reason, at least it seems to me. Doing business with physical currency is not just objectively worse than digital transactions under most circumstances, it’s also increasingly untenable for more and more of life.
Banking services basically are so successful they became a necessity for the vast majority of people who can access them—you have to have money storage, as a prerequisite to moving money you can’t or don’t wish to store. I can’t think of a reason I should pay a bank for the privilege of access to paying some of my own money to another party.
On the other hand, I think this is just as good an argument that the kind of banking I’m describing should be a public good rather than a part of the services provided by investment firms. I even think there’s fairly good precedent for that argument, albeit at a drastically larger scale and with an unfortunately storied history of fraud and abuse.
Re: Silvergate Bank to begin voluntary liquidation
#59It's interesting to see how quickly the public interest (and money!) has shifted from cryptocurrency to AI.
It's essentially the same crowd moving from one hustle to another. There's a new tech buzzword every few years, and it's easy to raise money from clueless investors who don't want to miss out. Remember "big data"? Or the "Uber for XYZ" phase?
Re: Silvergate Bank to begin voluntary liquidation
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
That TLT story is being severely under-reported.
Under-reported by who? Virtually everyone I know has been watching the Fed / FFR and the rate-hike news because it affects things like long-term treasuries very significantly.
The FFR going from 0% to 4.5% over the last year is probably the biggest, most important (and definitely well reported) piece of news... and constantly makes front-page material on most financial newspapers I've been reading.
The idea that this is somehow "underreported" is... odd... to me. The amount of commentary on rising interest rates, federal fund rates, hawks in the Fed, inverted yield curves and more suggests that the public is hyper-aware of this and the implications.