Silvergate is one of the leading banks for innovative businesses in fintech and cryptocurrency. The bank was founded in 1988 in San Diego of The United States of America as a state chartered bank and carried out its operations in a similar manner like any other traditional banks. With the increase in digital currency activities around the world, the bank started pursuing digital currency customers from 2013.
The bank had 542 digital currency-related clients in the industry which includes the crypto exchanges, miner, institutional investors in digital assets and others as of 31 December 2018 according to update in IPO prospectus that was filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on 18 March 2019. The number of digital currency-related clients had certainly gone up to 483 crypto clients as on 30 September 2018 that Silvergate counted when it first filed to go public the last year.
The bank’s openness to the cryptocurrency industry has certainly attracted new customers. According to the document, in over 5 years from 2013, the bank has developed proprietary compliance capabilities that include ongoing monitoring of customer activities and evaluating a market participant’s ability to monitor the flow of funds of their customers actively. Moreover, it believes that these are the capabilities that prove to be an advantage for them in providing a meaningful barrier to entry against the Silvergate bank’s potential competitors since there are no well-established and easily navigable regulatory roadmap for competitors to serve digital currency industry customers.
The CEO and the co-founder of Bittrex say, “Our company is built on innovative, emerging technology, and it’s important that our banking partners understand the quickly evolving business needs of technology-driven companies.
He also added we can rely on Silvergate to provide timely service and strategic solutions to support our rapidly growing business.”
With all the cryptocurrency industry’s increasing popularity, the banking industry seems to be accepting with the digital currency, and there seems to be a great boom in future.