While I generally agree about people blowing this out of proportion, here's a hypothetical: SVB seems to have had a very concentrated set of customer relations

While I generally agree about people blowing this out of proportion, here's a hypothetical: SVB seems to have had a very concentrated set of customer relationships. For example, a startup might do its banking at SVB, and the startup's founder might do his/her banking at SVB. That include taking loans to buy houses as cars--because traditional banks don't "get" borrowers who look like a founder. Now that startups can't make payroll (and some of the founder's personal deposits might be frozen), what if startup founders start defaulting on their loans? So SVB's successor has to write down those assets... which makes it harder to pay out the deposits... which triggers more defaults... which results in writing down more assets. That could turn into a very nasty death spiral, particularly if it creates contagion that spreads to other banks.