Totally respect your opinion. During normal circumstances, I 100% agree with your assessment. But, this story is much deeper than that.
The first bank to fail was Silvergate Bank. Here is their short bio on Wikipedia about them:
“Silvergate Bank is a Californian bank founded in 1988. The company began providing services for cryptocurrency users in 2016, and conducted an IPO in 2019. In November 2022, concerns were raised about Silvergate’s health, following the fall in cryptocurrency prices and the bankruptcy of FTX.”
On March 8, 2023, it was announced that Silvergate Bank would wind down its operations and liquidate.
Less than 48 hours later Silicon Valley Bank was taken over.
Then, less than 48 hours after that, Signature Bank was taken down. Here is their bio from Wiki:
"Signature Bank was a New York-based full-service commercial bank with 40 private client offices throughout New York, Connecticut, California, Nevada, and North Carolina. In addition to banking products, specialty national businesses provided services specific to industries such as commercial real estate, private equity, mortgage servicing, and venture banking; subsidiaries of the bank provided equipment financing and investment services. At the end of 2022, the bank had total assets of $110.4 billion and deposits of $82.6 billion; as of 2021, it had loans of $65.25 billion.
Signature Bank was founded in 2001 by former executives and employees of Republic National Bank of New York after its purchase by HSBC. It focused on wealthy clients and built personal relationships with them. For most of its history, it had offices only in the New York City area. In the late 2010s, it began to expand geographically and in terms of services, though it was most noted for its 2018 decision to open itself to the cryptocurrency industry. By 2021, cryptocurrency businesses had represented 30 percent of its deposits."
This is a crypto story. And by bailing out these companies, they are bailing out crypto. If it were a true risk-on situation, you wouldn’t see Bitcoin up 25% while the NASDAQ 100 is up .45% in the same time frame.
These bank failures are more than likely the fallout from LUNA, Celcius, Gemini, Voyager, and FTX.
