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> Client base which are supposed to be the biggest risk takers in the economy.

A huge part of being a successful risk taker is knowing when to get out. Make no mistake, SVB was going to collapse eventually. Too much of their deposits were startup slush funds that will be withdrawn in the next few years as they struggle to raise money.

See, that's what I started thinking as well. Except banks aren't startups. Banks actually make more money during high interest environment, and they don't need to have increasing deposits to stay alive (that's wrong projection from crypto grifters).

If they had cash injection, they could still plan for reduced client deposits. They don't need their deposit base to grow to stay alive. That's startups projections.

> Banks actually make more money during high interest environment

SVB was not in a position to capitalize on raising rates. All their money was stuck in those low rate bonds and mbs's. If they want to get in on those higher rates they would need their deposits to increase, but they have been and will continue to decrease. They tried to raise money, no one gave them any because their book was underwater.

Again you're confusing bank and crypto. They wouldn't need to have their deposits increase. They would need to increase their capital. They weren't underwater before the bank run, they were undercapitalized.

Which would mean that whoever would enter, would get a big chunk of their stock, but he would still have a good deal. Banks don't need increasing or decreasing deposits. They need stable and predictable deposits.

They know how fast you burn cash, so they know what flows to expect from you and how much of your money they get to invest and for what duration. SVB failed to predict the Fed, but there's no way they survived this long without knowing how to plan around cash burning startups, that's their bread and butter.

What made finding a buyer impossible is that their deposit base showed their unpredictability. And they have done tremendous damage to startups and banking relations after this. Finding banks is going to be much harder as a startup after this debacle, whether you're part of this bank run or not.

Was it Peter Thiel who started the bank run?

"The bank run that led to SVB’s collapse was allegedly started by tech tycoon and Republican political donor Peter Thiel.

After SVB’s collapse, journalists and critics have shifted their attention to Thiel, accusing him of pressuring companies to stop funding the bank. It is believed that his actions were the first to ignite the bank run, which prompted California regulators to step in."

https://lifestyleug.com/peter-thiel-byrne-hobarts-newsletter...

but the speed is what matters. a bank can handle withdrawal outflows as long as it doesn't happen all at once like that.

> Could they have raised back money by selling shares and return to solid ground? Also probably yes.

For the record, I believe that's "definitely yes". As far as I'm aware, they were securing additional funding at the time they put out the announcement that ultimately triggered the run.

Which makes the whole panic that much more frustrating (even if it is understandable from a game theory perspective), and likely would've been avoidable if the CEO hadn't completely f*ked up the messaging.

> It's actually hilarious that people who were selling sham crypto for billions of dollars got spooked by a bank. As depositors. It's like they projected their own insecurities and grift and fled like they saw their own scam and found themselves in it.

I mostly saw VCs, techies and tech bros here and many HNers and especially YC screaming at the government to save their pyramid scheme of funding for unprofitable startups who failed to read the FDIC insurance deposit limit of a failed bank.

Quite funny to see the techies here panicking all over Twitter and on HN around the collapse.

I don't usually, but... https://media.tenor.com/87_Ea43k7O0AAAAd/face-mask-mask.gif

> Fled away at record speed.

All while screaming "bank run", which was a clear signal from them to the Fed that they should step in.

certain loud voices in the sphere have also revealed their complete ignorance of how the banking system works