4 ms·

Silicon Valley Bank says no to Bitcoin businesses

29 points by tlack 13y ago

dubfan 13y ago
Why does this site have its own scroll handler? It looks very strange and floaty and doesn't play with touchpad gestures in Chrome for OSX.
- bpicolo 13y ago
  Can't 2-finger swipe back. Super annoying and unnecessary.
- tluyben2 13y ago
  Was coming to say that here; that's really horrible.
chrisva 13y ago
tldr; Banking regulations are complex, and (for very good reasons) slow to adopt innovation. Bitcoin doesn't fit in yet, and someone is annoyed. (And honestly, considering that Bitcoin transactions approximate anonymous cash transactions, companies with bitcoin assets will scare the hell out of the US banking regulators and make it difficult to do wire fraud detection and proper auditing)
arbuge 13y ago
I remember these guys once turned me down when I was starting an affiliate network. I got the impression they thought affiliate marketing was some kind of scam...
- dboat 13y ago
  In their defense, it very often is. The reputation is well earned. I used to work in a major affiliate marketing ad network, and they have these events where the most successful affiliates are taken on a vacation. One time, this took place at the company headquarters, so I spent a little bit of time getting to know them. Not hating, but what a bunch of unscrupulous rogues they were! To say they were a pack of untrustworthy hooligans would be politely understating the point, which is exactly what I will do.
  - tluyben2 13y ago
    Yep. A while (10 years I think) ago I made a lot of money by 'accident' by replacing my ads with affiliate offers on a very busy site I had. I had no clue what affiliate marketing was or how it worked; I read a spam email by a company doing it and it sounded like it was worth a try. It worked; it converted like mad and my income from this side project rocketed. The company invited me to one of these vacation things on a ship; the people I met there... I like the affiliate concept but indeed a lot of companies and people involved are just borderline criminals. I also noticed that most of them just know nothing; they accidentally rolled into this and it worked for them, but they don't know business (the money tap is just on or off; most of them don't do bookkeeping or pay tax) or anything outside 'Must Make Money Easily'. Not sure if the latter changed as I never went again.
gph 13y ago
The pretension in the bitcoin community is starting to really wear on me. Maybe it's just me, but I can hardly read through a lot of these articles, it comes off like propaganda. Possibly the greatest innovation of our time? I suppose time might make me look the fool, but really?? And then the Gandhi quote... Just accept the fact that a bank has decided bitcoin isn't worth the risk yet. Don't act like they spit in the face of social justice and all that is right in this world.
- betterunix 13y ago
  If you remove speculators from the picture, Bitcoin's userbase is mostly: (a) People trying to avoid the fees associated with other forms of electronic payments, who basically rely on services that exchange Bitcoin payments for fiat currency. (b) The services that people in category (a) rely on. (c) People who for various reasons want a currency without any government, bank, or legal code. You are not seeing the ludicrous claims about Bitcoin being the greatest innovation of our time from the people in categories (a) or (b). It is either the people in category (c) or else the speculators who want to promote the hype because it makes them money.
  - ericb 13y ago
    I think there is category (d)-people who see that this offers possibilities that are only now being glimpsed. Low/no trust contracts, an inflation hedge that is instant, and spendable and transferrable like cash (hi Argentina), autonomous agents that can transact freely (reddit.com/r/bitcointip), brain wallets, the ability to transfer > 10k without paperwork, micro-payments are finally viable... Just to name what my limited mind can conjure. Not to mention the things it seems like you're dismissing as reasons to be extremely bullish--that the transfer fees of Western Union is on the order of 10% and paypal freezes funds.
- vacri 13y ago
  I thought it ironic that the author was talking about 'bitcoin being the greatest innovation of our time'... ... over the internet.
luckydude 13y ago
Silicon Valley Bank. Yeah, used those guys when I was starting BitMover, very quickly moved away from them. They act like they help startups, my experience was they provided nothing over any random bank and they charged more. That was ~15 years ago, maybe they are better now, I have no idea.
- dmk23 13y ago
  My experience exactly. I left them years ago when they jacked up basic banking fees to ridiculous levels. When I was a client them they did organize "meetups with VCs/lawyers", but for the most part those events were mostly designed to pander to the guests' egos and I presume make them feel valued enough to drive their companies towards SVBank for higher-ticket services, like large credit lines.
  - luckydude 13y ago
    Yeah. Back then we could have used a credit line of about $2M. That would have helped. They were telling me how grateful I should be for a $50K credit line. At the same time I was consulting at a $8K/day rate doing perf work for web sites. Thanks for the "help" SVB. Bank of America, for all their crap, was actually more reasonable. No love for BofA but SVB was useless in my opinion.
- benmccann 13y ago
  They've provided us with services we've struggled to get elsewhere. E.g. not having to personally guarantee our company's credit cards and being able to give read-only account access to our accountant.
joejohnson 13y ago
The "first they ignore you..." quote is often attributed to Gandhi, but he likely never said it: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mahatma_Gandhi#Disputed http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mahatma_Gandhi#Disputed Also, somebody should start a Bank of Bitcoin. There's no reason why the benefits of banking couldn't be applied to bitcoin.
headgasket 13y ago
This article is semantically interesting. It's a negative title, but it has a kinda positive message for "the rest of us" (apple circa 1985). You see, the FBI now has 3.5% of the whole currency(not the float, of the WHOLE shebang) --ref the silk road shutdown. So there's a need to keep the appetite of the crowd that can buy this vision wet. I say we all cash out real fast; just for kicks.
- Phlarp 13y ago
  3.5%? By my last count they had less than 2% of currently issued coins and less than 1% of the eventual 21 million?
  - headgasket 13y ago
    My bad, a At the moment they have about 1.5% for a total of 30+M USD. Source:http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/10/25/fbi-says-its-seized-20-million-in-bitcoins-from-ross-ulbricht-alleged-owner-of-silk-road/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/10/25/fbi-say...

29 points by tlack 13y ago

Why does this site have its own scroll handler? It looks very strange and floaty and doesn't play with touchpad gestures in Chrome for OSX.

bpicolo 13y ago
Can't 2-finger swipe back. Super annoying and unnecessary.
tluyben2 13y ago
Was coming to say that here; that's really horrible.

chrisva 13y ago

tldr; Banking regulations are complex, and (for very good reasons) slow to adopt innovation. Bitcoin doesn't fit in yet, and someone is annoyed. (And honestly, considering that Bitcoin transactions approximate anonymous cash transactions, companies with bitcoin assets will scare the hell out of the US banking regulators and make it difficult to do wire fraud detection and proper auditing)

arbuge 13y ago

I remember these guys once turned me down when I was starting an affiliate network. I got the impression they thought affiliate marketing was some kind of scam...

dboat 13y ago
In their defense, it very often is. The reputation is well earned. I used to work in a major affiliate marketing ad network, and they have these events where the most successful affiliates are taken on a vacation. One time, this took place at the company headquarters, so I spent a little bit of time getting to know them. Not hating, but what a bunch of unscrupulous rogues they were! To say they were a pack of untrustworthy hooligans would be politely understating the point, which is exactly what I will do.
- tluyben2 13y ago
  Yep. A while (10 years I think) ago I made a lot of money by 'accident' by replacing my ads with affiliate offers on a very busy site I had. I had no clue what affiliate marketing was or how it worked; I read a spam email by a company doing it and it sounded like it was worth a try. It worked; it converted like mad and my income from this side project rocketed. The company invited me to one of these vacation things on a ship; the people I met there... I like the affiliate concept but indeed a lot of companies and people involved are just borderline criminals. I also noticed that most of them just know nothing; they accidentally rolled into this and it worked for them, but they don't know business (the money tap is just on or off; most of them don't do bookkeeping or pay tax) or anything outside 'Must Make Money Easily'. Not sure if the latter changed as I never went again.

gph 13y ago

The pretension in the bitcoin community is starting to really wear on me. Maybe it's just me, but I can hardly read through a lot of these articles, it comes off like propaganda. Possibly the greatest innovation of our time? I suppose time might make me look the fool, but really?? And then the Gandhi quote... Just accept the fact that a bank has decided bitcoin isn't worth the risk yet. Don't act like they spit in the face of social justice and all that is right in this world.

betterunix 13y ago
If you remove speculators from the picture, Bitcoin's userbase is mostly: (a) People trying to avoid the fees associated with other forms of electronic payments, who basically rely on services that exchange Bitcoin payments for fiat currency. (b) The services that people in category (a) rely on. (c) People who for various reasons want a currency without any government, bank, or legal code. You are not seeing the ludicrous claims about Bitcoin being the greatest innovation of our time from the people in categories (a) or (b). It is either the people in category (c) or else the speculators who want to promote the hype because it makes them money.
- ericb 13y ago
  I think there is category (d)-people who see that this offers possibilities that are only now being glimpsed. Low/no trust contracts, an inflation hedge that is instant, and spendable and transferrable like cash (hi Argentina), autonomous agents that can transact freely (reddit.com/r/bitcointip), brain wallets, the ability to transfer > 10k without paperwork, micro-payments are finally viable... Just to name what my limited mind can conjure. Not to mention the things it seems like you're dismissing as reasons to be extremely bullish--that the transfer fees of Western Union is on the order of 10% and paypal freezes funds.
vacri 13y ago
I thought it ironic that the author was talking about 'bitcoin being the greatest innovation of our time'... ... over the internet.

luckydude 13y ago

Silicon Valley Bank. Yeah, used those guys when I was starting BitMover, very quickly moved away from them. They act like they help startups, my experience was they provided nothing over any random bank and they charged more. That was ~15 years ago, maybe they are better now, I have no idea.

dmk23 13y ago
My experience exactly. I left them years ago when they jacked up basic banking fees to ridiculous levels. When I was a client them they did organize "meetups with VCs/lawyers", but for the most part those events were mostly designed to pander to the guests' egos and I presume make them feel valued enough to drive their companies towards SVBank for higher-ticket services, like large credit lines.
- luckydude 13y ago
  Yeah. Back then we could have used a credit line of about $2M. That would have helped. They were telling me how grateful I should be for a $50K credit line. At the same time I was consulting at a $8K/day rate doing perf work for web sites. Thanks for the "help" SVB. Bank of America, for all their crap, was actually more reasonable. No love for BofA but SVB was useless in my opinion.
benmccann 13y ago
They've provided us with services we've struggled to get elsewhere. E.g. not having to personally guarantee our company's credit cards and being able to give read-only account access to our accountant.

joejohnson 13y ago

The "first they ignore you..." quote is often attributed to Gandhi, but he likely never said it: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mahatma_Gandhi#Disputed http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mahatma_Gandhi#Disputed Also, somebody should start a Bank of Bitcoin. There's no reason why the benefits of banking couldn't be applied to bitcoin.

headgasket 13y ago

This article is semantically interesting. It's a negative title, but it has a kinda positive message for "the rest of us" (apple circa 1985). You see, the FBI now has 3.5% of the whole currency(not the float, of the WHOLE shebang) --ref the silk road shutdown. So there's a need to keep the appetite of the crowd that can buy this vision wet. I say we all cash out real fast; just for kicks.

Phlarp 13y ago
3.5%? By my last count they had less than 2% of currently issued coins and less than 1% of the eventual 21 million?
- headgasket 13y ago
  My bad, a At the moment they have about 1.5% for a total of 30+M USD. Source:http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/10/25/fbi-says-its-seized-20-million-in-bitcoins-from-ross-ulbricht-alleged-owner-of-silk-road/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/10/25/fbi-say...