There aren’t many crypto-friendly banks that can be named, let alone one that goes public on the premises it supports cryptocurrencies. But Silvergate Bank is such a bank. It officially went public on the New York Stock Exchange this past Thursday.
Silvergate applied for an IPO roughly one year ago and it was only yesterday that the bank tweeted that the IPO has gone through. As reported by press and CoinDesk, the IPO realized only one day after the bank received its “notice of effectiveness” from the US SEC. The notice indicated that the IPO bid has been granted.
Silvergate has a broad range of clients including more than 700 companies in the cryptocurrency space. The information has been updated for the IPO prospectus in September 2019. In March 2019, Silvergate had around 500 clients. Interestingly, while the client base grew, the assets of the bank decreased marginally, going from $1.6 billion to $1.5 billion in the end of 2018, as reported by CoinDesk. Right around the time of the IPO filing, the deposits of Silvergate were $1.6 billion again.
Regarding the IPO, Silvergate is pricing its shares for $12 and its intends to offer 3,333,333 Class A shares. According to the company’s press release, 1 million of this stock is offered by the bank itself, while the other part is coming from shareholders.
Silvergate has priced its shares lower than what was expected, since the preliminary price was around $15 per share and wanted to raise around $65 million in total. With the current pricing, Silvergate will be raising approximately $40 million. The shares will begin trading by 12 November under the “SI” ticker symbol.
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