Sunday 12 March 2023, a third bank was closed by the US Authority.
It is Signature Bank in New York.
Signature Bank reportedly had strong ties with the Tech industry.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) took control of Signature on the same day. The bank had $110.36 billion in assets and $88.59 billion in deposits at the end of last year, according to the New York State Department of Financial Services.
According to Reuters, the US Treasury Department and other banking regulators have declared in a joint statement, that all depositors of Signature Bank and Silicon Valley Bank will be compensated and " no losses will be borne by taxpayers",
It is highly questionable whether this information is correct now that the US Secretary of Treasure has indicated in the meantime that the banks will not be bailed out financially but the depositors helped to monetize their deposits. Whether this is the same as effectively paying them out, the future will tell.
The statement from The New York Post may be closer to the truth.
"Silicon and Signature depositors will be compensated, but the banks' shareholders and unsecured debtors will not be protected, officials said."
That is precisely where the rub lies. Most deposit holders are not insured and those who are insured are only up to a ceiling of US$250,000. They will most likely lose the rest.
Financial newspaper Fortune announced today, 13 March 2023, that the sudden closure of Signature Bank in New York by regulators requires extraordinary efforts by the US to repair the country's banking system and address growing customer concerns about the safety of their deposits.
The failure of 2 other banks has led to the immediate creation by the Federal Reserve of a new lending program for banks to ensure they can meet all customer withdrawal requests.
How the US will solve the problem, knowing that it is already drowning in a debt burden of over $3,000,000 billion, the future will tell. The same goes for the Federal Reserve whose money has since long ceased to be guaranteed by the gold standard but consists only of digital figures.
The Federal Insurance Deposit Corp. has said it has transferred all Signature Bank deposits and virtually all of its assets to Signature Bridge Bank NA, a full-service bank that will be managed by the FDIC, while selling the institution to potential bidders. An auction for the bank could begin as early as Monday, March 13." Actually, the FIDC already says in the unsaid that the pot is empty and the pennies will have to come from somewhere else. A buyer who puts enough on the table.
Like Silicon Valley Bank, with customers made up almost entirely of corporates, Signature had a deposit base that was largely uninsured - roughly 90% of Signature's deposits, and north of 93% of SVB's domestic deposits. This may have caught the attention of regulators investigating banks with large uninsured deposits.
Signature Bank's collapse could cause serious problems for one corner of the tech industry: the crypto sector. Coinbase Global Inc, the largest crypto exchange in the US, said Friday night it had a balance of $240 million at the bank. Paxos Global said it had $250 million there, and that it "has private deposit insurance well above our cash balance and FDIC limits per account."
"Crypto is now almost completely shut out of US banking," said Nisa Amoils, managing partner at A100x Ventures.
Signature is the second crypto-friendly bank to fail in less than a week.
"The biggest thing about Silvergate and Signature was that they were the only two banks that really had the global 24/7 settlement systems," he said.
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