Silicon Valley Techno-Utopianism

not good ...for whom?

https://ir.firstrepublic.com/static-files/295faa27-f208-4936-81ff-6c8bfa0fb6b5

🤔

Scoop: Vox Media has a substantial portion of its cash at Silicon Valley Bank. The media angle, w/@eringriffith:https://t.co/md8gNCxkwH pic.twitter.com/sZaJod6jmY

— Ben Mullin (@BenMullin) March 11, 2023

Exciting week ahead for a bunch of FDIC employees tho huh

Gift link to new NY Times story, including that Vox Media info above and a dozen or two more anecdotes.

Gift link to new NY Times story, including that Vox Media info above and a dozen or two more anecdotes.

https://ir.firstrepublic.com/static-files/295faa27-f208-4936-81ff-6c8bfa0fb6b5

🤔

― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Saturday, March 11, 2023 1:47 AM (six hours ago)

“Every banker knows that if he has to prove that he is worthy of credit, however good may be his arguments, in fact his credit is gone.” — Walter Bagehot, “Lombard Street,” published in 1873.

I never face this problem because I never have more than $250K of liquid assets

Still remarkable that a lot of the crypto/vc types who argued expansionary monetary and fiscal policy would bring about the destruction of the Republic appear to have only themselves existed because of those expansionary policies. Like a scifi movie lol

— Jeff Stein (@JStein_WaPo) March 11, 2023

bros are sad u_u

I suppose I've learned today how many people are excited to see our technology industry fail. It's unfortunate that it went from something exciting and futuristic to something political where people root for it to fail--even if others are collateral. I guess we broke something.

— Suhail (@Suhail) March 11, 2023

Watching people delight in the collapse of a bank that’s been vital to the greatest wealth generation engine this country has had for the last 2 decades is really disheartening to see.

I think this is a Twitter problem.I’m gonna be spending less time here.

— Austin Federa (@Austin_Federa) March 11, 2023

maybe they can go galt after the bailout

def a Twitter problem

oh no my wealth generation engine

smh so many haters

Merely succeeding will cause there to be people who want you to fail. It's not necessary to break anything, or for politics or money to be involved.

— Paul Graham (@paulg) March 11, 2023

yesterday i succeeded at getting a discount on ice cream ... does that mean now there will be people who want me to fail?

i wish to see your ice cream regime collapse

actually the bar code on the ice cream didn't scan, so the cashier put in the price at an amount that turned out to be lower than the actual price, but at the time he was manually entering the price, he really did think that was the price, and said out loud, "i think this is the correct price; i might be on the money here." ... And I responded, "I bet you are otm."

wow and he was in fact off the money just shows the total mendaciousness of todays ice cream bros

def not a wealth generation engine

resonable point

Says a lot that there’s been a tech industry for decades and its main defense is still quasi-mystic concepts like “innovation” and not “we employ x amount of people and produce y essential goods”

— John Carl Baker (@johncarlbaker) March 11, 2023

a wealth generation engine that burns wealth as fuel

lol

https://i.imgur.com/ZXN3uzL.png

An extinction that only lasts a decade?

usdc breaking the buck is… not… good…

I def get that SVB's closing is not good for the tech sector even if FDIC manages to reopen it under new management, but the usdc is a device for enabling crypto investments by pegging crypto to the US dollar. its a total mystery to me how deeply the trad bank/financial sector has waded into crypto speculation using the usdc as an accounting device to lend its crypto 'assets' a spurious legitimacy.

One question I couldn’t answer yesterday was why SVB made the bad moves it made this week that led to the run by depositors. This great @Reuters scoop answers it: They were trying to stave off a downgrade by Moodys & acted on advice from Goldman Sachs https://t.co/pRNQ40Nps6

— Emily Flitter (@FlitterOnFraud) March 11, 2023

idk who this is or if its right but if it is this was a straight bank run triggered by... thiel capital

From another reputable source: pic.twitter.com/IIgFci61NG

— JJ (@JosephJacks_) March 11, 2023

Yikes

my promoted tweet about there not being a bank run has a lot of people asking questions already answered by my promoted tweet pic.twitter.com/BBtRiObZfK

— alth0u🤸 (@alth0u) March 12, 2023

FRB doesn't seem to be very much like SVB outside of location.

its pretty funny to see these guys losing their shit trying all sorts of desperate manipulations

ON MONDAY 100,000 AMERICANS WILL BE LINED UP AT THEIR REGIONAL BANK DEMANDING THEIR MONEY — MOST WILL NOT GET IT

THIS WENT FROM SILICON VALLEY INSIDERS ON THURSDAY TO THE MIDDLE CLASS ON SATURDAY — MAIN STREET FINDS OUT MONDAY

— @jason (@Jason) March 12, 2023

its in gods hands now brother please stop yelling online

Depositors will get their money back, what all these folks are actually demanding is Respect Online, and that's less likely pic.twitter.com/7DtJfFFfoA

— Mr. Bedtime (@InternetHippo) March 12, 2023

https://t.co/a6axhx7foA pic.twitter.com/jIWasGOGzw

— lysis strata (@pultuskpa) March 12, 2023

https://t.co/Xd17OoQenJ

— lysis strata (@pultuskpa) March 12, 2023

haa

Real story:
Former McKinsey who made 230k$/year gets 3M in VC fund to start a business.

The business: Charge 6000$/year to insanely rich people to help them plan vacations and birthday parties.

Feel bad story: debunked. https://t.co/HNpt6Uh1aB pic.twitter.com/FmHlYxjesU

— Beth, Chuck's Vacuum Cleaner (@ChuckVacuumBeth) March 12, 2023

wow

Hopefully someone will buy the bank, but I don’t think there’s any appetite for the federal government to bail out the bank. - @SpeakerPelosi on SVB at @TheAtlantic’s event now #SXSW23.

— Anna Bross (@AnnaCBross) March 12, 2023

FWIW I looked up that family's political contributions and it's all Fetterman, Warnock, and Tim Ryan, though the contributions are pretty small given how rich they presumably are; I guess all the money goes back into the business!

interesting thread, might be some sort of fraud happening

So the conclusion is 1 of 3:
* The whole of Silicon Valley has no idea how to run a competent business
* There was some financial chicanery that led to a requirement to bank at SVB without an ICS backstop
* This is all a Big Lie to engineer a bailout@DavidSacks can tell us which

— David Dayen (@ddayen) March 12, 2023

I have had a dozen clients over the years who used SVB.

This is a good summary:

https://themacrocompass.substack.com/p/banking-crisis

the FDIC has a list of all the failed banks since 2000, about 550 -- California has a few dozen on the list. I didn't see any failed banks in Massachusetts, only a couple in Connecticut and NY (states that seem very bank-y), not very many in Texas either, but damn ... Florida and Georgia have had a lot of failed banks in the past 23 years.

xp - I don't know if I'd call categorizing bonds as "Held to Maturity" an "accounting trick" when these are assets that tend to be held to maturity. The "trick" to me is considering them eligible to be "liquid assets" if they are supposed to be "held to maturity" and that maturity isn't gonna happen for a few years. Because that's not very liquid.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-12/fdic-auction-for-svb-said-to-be-underway-final-bids-due-sunday

It Is Happening

h8 to Take a Haircut

love to Be Made Whole

itt a normal person interacts with a valley titan who understands how life would collapse without startups

seems like a good opportunity to realize a lot of regular people are resentful of that "wealth creation engine" because it was run primarily for the benefit of insanely elitist and arrogant people at the expense of the rest of the planet

— lauren (@NotABigJerk) March 11, 2023

oops mookie, i see you posted about the wealth creation engine yesterday

Ok I’m feeling better that the government isn’t going to bail these creeps out.

Way back my friends and I started a bank. It was moderately successful but ultimately acquired by BBVA and shuttered. I have a lot of regrets about that experience. I’ve been trying to convince that same group of friends to join a bid for SBV and nobody is interested. I feel like this is my mid-life crisis moment. I believe it’s an absolute steal at the rumored bids and could be a way to make banking better for everyone but I know JPM will acquire it for nothing and nothing will ever change.

Humblebrag

Maybe

My friends and I started Wachovia as a goof out of college.

Credit unions already exist and are fine, Simple was nice but nothing saddled with VC money will ever be good in the long run is the lesson of the past decade

Observe that the Three Good Websites (Lichess, Bandcamp, Letterboxd) are not VC unicorn moonshot money holes, Silicon Valley has produced nothing of enduring value since approximately ever