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Crypto-Friendly Bank Silvergate Suspends Dividend Payouts

Silvergate, a California-based crypto bank whose shares are listed on the New York Stock Exchange, is suspending dividend payout to remain highly liquid as the digital currency market tries to pull itself out of the liquidity crisis of 2022.

In a press release on January 27, Silvergate, a state-chartered bank that went public in 2019, said it would suspend dividend payout on its “5.375% Fixed Rate Non-Cumulative Perpetual Preferred Stock, Series A” to preserve capital. 

Focus On Liquidity

The crypto bank said its primary focus is maintaining a highly liquid balance sheet with a strong capital position. This will give it an advantage as it navigates the high volatility in crypto. The move means the crypto bank will have more capital than customers’ digital assets.

The bank’s board of directors will re-evaluate the payments of quarterly dividends depending on market conditions evolve. 

There was no official comment from any of Silvergate’s executives.

The high volatility in crypto saw prices peak at around $70,000 in November 2021 before plunging to $15,300 in November 2022.

Bitcoin Price on January 28

Losses were due to several macroeconomic factors and crypto-related events. The shift in monetary policy saw central banks hike interest rates to tame runaway inflation. 

In return, this change saw capital flow in the other direction, away from what investors would ordinarily label as “risky”, including crypto and stocks, to safe havens like bonds and gold. 

Silvergate Forced To Take Bold Steps 

The collapse of several CeFi platforms, first 3AC, Voyager, and BlockFi, before FTX said it was halting withdrawals and eventually filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, broke the markets. In the aftermath, crypto assets capitulated, with Bitcoin sinking to 2022 lows. 

At one time, FTX was valued at over $32 billion. It later emerged that Sam Bankman-Fried misappropriated clients’ funds through the exchange’s related trading firm, Alameda Research.

The risk to safety from investors spilled over to Silvergate, stretching the crypto bank. On January 17, Silvergate posted its financial statements with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), saying they posted a loss of $949 million in 2022. This was a sharp reversal in fortunes considering the bank made $75.5 million in profits in 2021. 

Early this month, Silvergate clients withdrew almost $8 billion of their crypto deposits. Reports indicate that roughly 66% of the bank’s clients pulled out their coins in the last three months of the year. Subsequently, the bank was forced to sell $5.2 billion of its assets to cover costs and remain liquid amid the industry’s rapid changes.  

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NYDIG Analyzed The FTX Collapse And Its Implications. What Did We Learn?

It’s time for NYDIG to chip in. The FTX fiasco is the theme of the month in the crypto world, and the show’s just beginning. The NYDIG research team avoids the temptation to summarize the whole saga and goes straight to the implications of the fall of Sam Bankman-Fried’s empire. “Some signs of contagion have appeared but a full accounting of the damage and regaining of investor confidence will likely take time,” they say understating the harsh reality. 

Taking a page from NYDIG’s book, let’s skip the intro and go straight to the conclusions.

Contagion Is Around The Corner

Speaking about “signs of contagion,” NYDIG mentions BlockFi and the Genesis/ Gemini combo. However, there might be much more to come.

“Several other service providers have piqued the curiosity of crypto sleuths as potential next dominoes, but we hesitate to speculate too much without hard evidence. Regardless, industry participants are on edge for even the slightest signs of stress and continue to pull balances off exchanges.”

In the contagion section of the paper, we find a rare mention of a conspiracy theory that’s making the rounds in crypto twitter. Rarely do big players bring this up. Of course, NYDIG ends up doubling down on the thesis about Terra/Luna that they put out in a previous paper titled “On Impossible Things Before Breakfast.”

“There have been accusations that Alameda caused the initial de-peg of UST, and while that may have been the case, uneconomic rates paid by the Anchor Protocol and insecure economic design of LUNA/UST ensured its ultimate destruction, destroying $60B worth of crypto wealth in a few short days.”

In the previous paper, NYDIG printed a great segway to the next section. “DeFi is not decentralized. The Terra ecosystem was not decentralized. Terra initially sourced funding from LUNA token issuance apportioned to Terraform Labs at inception.”

FTTUSD price chart - TradingView

FTT price chart on Bitstamp | Source: FTT/USD on TradingView.com

NYDIG On DeFi Vs. CeFi

Even though they’re clearly not fans of DeFi, NYDIG gives them some credit. “Most DeFi protocols operated as advertised through the volatility this year, minus the ongoing hacks within the ecosystem.” True, but the ongoing hacks are not a minor factor. It’s a billion-dollar problem with no apparent solution available. However, according to NYDIG, this time the problem lies with centralized finance, and those companies “did the rest of the damage” by engaging in these behaviors:

“Poor risk controls, conflicts of interest, excessive leverage, unclear accounting, counterparty risks, and poor management were just some of the factors at play. Furthermore, the use of an equity-like token, FTX Token (FTT), as collateral exacerbated the issue.”

Is More Regulation The Answer?

According to NYDIG, the industry was expecting “improved regulatory clarity for US investors.” However, thanks to the FTX crash and Sam Bankman-Fried’s political lobbying, “the path in DC has grown more complicated. Regulators will now be on their toes and increasingly more likely to use their current authority to enforce existing regulations and possibly issue new ones.”

It is what it is, however one has to take into account that “FTX.com wasn’t even a US entity, which raises the question of how impactful improved US regulations would have been, at least with respect to preventing the specific recent events surrounding FTX.” That’s true, but FTX was in business with several US fully regulated entities. If effective, shouldn’t Silvergate’s AML procedures have detected Sam Bankman-Fried’s shenanigans? 

A related question would be, shouldn’t the due diligence of the highly regarded entities that invested in FTX have detected that something was off?

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