What happened
Shares of Silvergate Capital (SI) jumped as much as 21% out of the gate this morning. While shares have come down since then, the bank still traded much higher as of mid-morning.
So what
Silvergate Capital, which went public in 2019, is a roughly $5.6 billion asset bank based in La Jolla, California. The bank specializes in banking cryptocurrency clients such as institutional traders that trade various digital assets and crypto exchanges through its in-house payments system called the Silvergate Exchange Network (SEN).
SEN is a real-time payments network that can clear transactions in U.S. dollars instantly around the clock, 365 days a year, between two users in the network. This is ideal for institutional crypto traders and crypto exchanges because cryptocurrencies trade around the clock.
Shares of Silvergate have always appeared somewhat tied to the prices of crypto assets such as bitcoin (BTC -0.16%), which rocketed this morning after Tesla announced it had purchased $1.5 billion in bitcoin. Tesla also said it would start accepting bitcoin for payment of products.
Additionally, bank stocks got off to a good start this morning as the yield on the 10-year treasury note ticked higher, which is good for banks because it increases interest payments on long-term debt they loan out.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen recently said President Joe Biden's proposed $1.9 trillion stimulus bill could return the U.S. to full employment by 2022. The yield on long-term treasury notes tends to move higher as the prospect of inflation and future interest rate hikes comes into play.
Now what
Silvergate was the top-performing bank stock in 2020. As conditions improve for the banking sector and digital assets like bitcoin become more mainstream and surge higher, this stock should follow suit.