The collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried's crypto exchange FTX continues to ripple throughout the digital asset space.
Crypto-related bank Silvergate (SI) reported earnings results. Spoiler alert: It was an absolute disaster with crypto-related deposits plunging 68% in the fourth quarter while the company cut 40% of its staff and, to meet customer withdrawals, liquidated debt on its balance sheet. (The stock was down as much as -42% in pre-market trading.)
In an interview hosted by Hedgeye CEO Keith McCullough on November 14, 2022, veteran short-seller Marc Cohodes said to short Silvergate and the company's shenanigans "need to be called out." (Cohodes called FTX a fraud on HedgeyeTV a month before shit hit the fan).
It gets worse.
"Get a load of this. Last year, [Silvergate] transferred 1 trillion between these offshore entities and customers. 1 trillion on a 14 billion deposit base," Cohodes said in this HedgeyeTV interview in November. "This name was brought to my attention by who I think is the best bank analyst on the planet and that's Porter Collins, of "The Big Short Fame." He think they're in the process now of having a run on the bank."
It gets even worse. From Silvergate's website on October 22, 2022:
"Life as a crypto firm can be divided up into before Silvergate and after Silvergate — it's hard to overstate how much it revolutionized banking for blockchain companies.” -Sam Bankman-Fried, founder and CEO FTX and Alameda Research |
You just can't make this sh!t up.
Watch the 3-minute video above on Silvergate. Watch the entire November interview with Cohodes here.