What possible nefarious motive are you implying?
I'm guessing the mistake parent is implying to is that they put more than what was insured, knowing very well the risk that if the bank fail, they might only get back 250K USD, as it's only insured up to that.
Well, in theory at least. In practice it seems the insurance was actually a unspecified "unlimited" amount, as they'll get all their funds back now.
You put lots of cash into bank account, "what could go wrong?"
Bank implodes.
Federal government bails you out and goes to collect the money to do so from other banks who offered more reasonable rates and thus didn't get your business.
SVB clearly offered services that other banks couldn't or wouldn't provide - whether that be loans, credit cards, interest, or anything else.
They clearly fought to not be subject to specific regulations that bigger banks were subject to.
Was every depositor thinking about all this when choosing their banking decisions or were they just going with the bank their VC recommended? Probably the latter, but there's definitely some wiggle room here.
So yeah, not a better interest rate but the ability to get a venture debt line at all was predicated in banking at SVB.
Why else would anyone put all their money into a single account, and why would VCs even enforce doing so contractually?
When someone offers you something the market doesn't, you should understand that there's risk attached, especially when you're a company with millions or hundreds of millions in cash. When someone falls for some crypto "18% per year, no risk" scam, that's how we view it.
Why would anyone be happy for the workers of a bank that won't exist anymore in any form once the liquidation is sorted out?
[Edit: Nevermind, my dumbass didn't understand that those were the workers of the depositors, the clients of the depositors, etc.]
To be fair maybe some activities may still be sold to third parties - I have no idea.
What makes you say that SVB will continue operations?
SVB will cease to exist: it's being liquidated.
This isn't like when Best Buy went bankrupt, the banking operations will continue, the branches will still run. It will take a long time to absorb SVB's operations into a larger entity, the larger entity may choose to run them as a subsidiary. You are making assumptions about the operations and staff based on no information, if SVB is going to be open for services on Monday as the regulator has promised everybody will have to show up for work.
What do you think that the regulator has promised exactly?
The only promise I see is that people will be able to access all their money at the Deposit Insurance National Bank of Santa Clara (DINB).
They are running it under a new name. I understand how this can be confusing but they have to keep everything in place so that the systems will all still work and people can get their money, payroll systems, internal systems and processes all still work. And when a buyer for their operations is found it will keep on running and slowly be incorporated into the acquiring entity because it will in effect be a very large bank merger that will take time and effort.
Depositors might choose to run, but any business that runs their payroll though SVB is going to ask their CFO what to do and that guy is going to say, "We're full guaranteed, how much money to you want to spend to accomplish nothing?"