By Geoffrey Smith
Investing.com -- Silvergate (NYSE:SI), the troubled bank that occupied a key space in the cryptocurrency universe, is in talks with regulators, aiming to find a way to stave off collapse, according to news reports.
Bloomberg reported late on Tuesday that officials from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. have been sent to its headquarters in La Jolla, California to discuss emergency arrangements, including a possible injection of liquidity from major crypto investors.
The news is a chink of light in the dark skies over Silvergate, which warned last week that it may not be able to continue as a going concern due to massive losses on the forced sale of much of its securities portfolio. It had had to liquidate bonds at a loss as crypto companies scrambled to meet redemption requests from their own customers in the wake of exchange FTX's implosion in November.
So far, no decisions have been taken, Bloomberg's sources said.
If it goes down, Silvergate, with over $10 billion in assets as of last year, will be the biggest regulated U.S. bank to fail in more than a decade. Although not big in the scheme of the U.S. financial sector, its failure could have serious consequences for the crypto sector. The bank closed down a popular payments network last week that crypto companies had used as a conduit for funds between the parallel universes of crypto and fiat currency. With regulatory scrutiny on crypto having increased sharply since November, it's not clear who - if anyone - will provide banking services to the sector in the U.S. in the near term.
Typically, the FDIC often seeks a healthy bank to take over the assets and necessary operations of a failing one. In the absence of anyone willing to take on those operations, the FDIC may resolve the bank, in which case depositors would only be sure of getting a maximum of $250,000 of their money back, with any remaining assets earmarked to satisfy creditors.
By 07:25 ET (12:25 GMT), Silvergate stock was down 0.2% in premarket, having reversed initial gains on the report.