Another example of bankers making risky investments with depositor funds:
U.S. regulators on Sunday announced they were intervening to close Signature Bank, marking the second U.S. bank to fail days apart and the third-largest bank failure in U.S. history.
The bank has been placed into receivership under the Fed’s emergency lending authority, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC).
According to a December 2022 securities filing, N.Y.-based Signature Bank held more than $110 billion in assets and some of the biggest stakes among banks in the nation in the cryptocurrency industry.
The bank said at the time that it would be shrinking its $17.79 billion in crypto-related deposits by $8 billion to reduce risk in “a challenging cryptocurrency environment.”
The bank had client offices in New York, Connecticut, California, Nevada, and North Carolina, and had eight business lines beyond digital asset banking, including commercial real estate. Its clients among crypto companies included USDC stablecoin issuer Circle, the crypto exchange Coinbase, and the funds transfer network for cryptocurrency settlements and payments Fireblocks.