Silvergate Bank accepted a whopping $4.3 billion in new deposits from new and existing digital currency customers in second-quarter 2021, according to an earnings report released Tuesday.
Most came from crypto exchanges, which deposited $2.4 billion in cash during the quarter. Institutional investor deposits grew by $1.8 billion and those from other customers by $100 million. The La Jolla, Calif.-based bank, which serves major crypto firms such as Coinbase, Gemini and Kraken, added 120 digital currency customers for a total of 1,224.Â
Crypto firms are often a rich source of low-cost deposits for the few banks that openly serve the sector. Silvergateâs average cost of deposits was 0% in the three months through June, compared with 0.37% in the year-earlier quarter. For scale, average deposit costs for mid-cap commercial banks are normally around 0.75% to 1.25%.
The Silvergate Exchange Network (SEN), a fiat on-ramp for bitcoin markets, processed 137,947 transactions and transferred $239.6 billion over the network during the last quarter.
