So, check it out, I did all the hard research and studying to write this for you guys. After like 3 TikToks and 2 Twitter threads, I’m basically an expert on what went down with Silicon Valley Bank and why it went under. But I’m gonna hit you with all that boring technical crap. Nah, I’m gonna break it down so anyone with ¼ of a brain can understand.
Alright, so Silicon Valley Bank, based up in Northern California, has been around since ’83. But it really blew up in the late ’90s during the dot-com boom. See, in Silicon Valley, where all the startup (Facebook, Apple, Google) action goes down, there are a ton of newly rich young guns who need to stash their cash somewhere. That’s where SVB came in. They were holding like $9.5 billion in its investment division, which is like, a ridiculous amount of money.
So here’s what happened. All these tech bros got a bunch of bread from investors for their startup companies. It’s like when your parents come to visit and they bring you a handle of Tito’s and a 30 rack. You don’t wanna leave that out in the open where someone could snatch it, so you give it to your bro to hold onto while you’re at work. You trust him not to chug it all or lose it. That’s the same deal with these guys and SVB. Now, the banks gotta make money too, right? So they took that cash and invested it. Which is normal for a bank to do.
But here’s where things went south. They invested in mortgages. When rates were at 4%, that was a killer investment. But now? Not so much. People got spooked and started pulling their cash out. Only problem was, the bank didn’t have the money anymore. It’s like when you go to get your brews from your bro and he drank it all. One key difference between your bro and banks though is something called the FDIC. They ensure your cash up to $250K in case the bank goes belly up. Only thing is, these tech dudes had millions in SVB. After the SVB news came out, the biggest banks in America lost over 50 Billion in market value yesterday. Kind of a big problem. Also, if I got any of this information wrong, don’t come @ me. I’m just trying to help you guys out.
Here’s the thing, if you have over 250k in a SAVINGS ACCOUNT, I do not care that you lost all of it. There is 0 reason to be holding that much cash in one bank account at a time. I just checked my bank account and I have $732.73 and that’s a lot because I just got paid and haven’t paid off my credit card yet. I’m sure the government or something will bail out all these rich people like they always do. There are serious people in this world who feel bad about people losing their money in all of this. People who sympathize with billionaires are a different breed. “People are so mean to Jeff Bezos!”. I can guarantee that Jeff Bezos doesn’t care what Deborah from Rhode Island has to say about the work conditions in the Amazon Warehouses when he’s sailing through the Mediterranean on his 417-foot yacht. Let us make this clear: Bitcoin is the FUTURE!
