Crypto-Friendly Silvergate Bank Goes Public on New York Stock Exchange

Silvergate Bank, a crypto-friendly bank, officially began selling shares on the New York Stock Exchange Thursday.

Roughly a year after it first filed for its initial public offering, Silvergate began its “IPO day” on the NYSE, according to the stock exchange’s Twitter account. The news comes a day after Silvergate received a “notice of effectiveness” from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, indicating its long-running IPO bid had been accepted.

The bank currently serves more than 750 firms in the crypto space, including exchanges, investors and others, according to an updated IPO prospectus filed in September 2019.

This is up significantly from the 542 clients it reported in March 2019. At the time, while the bank saw its client base grow between November 2018 and March 2019, the assets it held shrank marginally, falling from nearly $1.6 billion to $1.5 billion in the last quarter of 2018.

In September’s filing, these numbers grew again, holding $1.55 billion in deposits.

SIlvergate priced its stock pricing at $12 per share on Nov. 6, and is planning to offer 3,333,333 shares of Class A common stock. Just under 1 million of these shares are being offered directly by Silvergate, while shareholders are offering the other 2.5 million, according to a press release.

These numbers are more conservative than an updated S1 filing dated late October 2019, where the company priced each share at a maximum of $15 and sought to raise roughly $65 million overall. If it sells the 3.3 million shares for $12 each, the company will more likely raise approximately $40 million.

The bank is hoping to sell these shares under the “SI” ticker by Nov. 12.

Silvergate could not be immediately reached for comment.

Silvergate CEO, Alan Lane, screen capture from Consensus 2016 video