U.S. regulators have stated that anyone that buys Signature Bank must agree to give up on its crypto business.
The deadline for bids to acquire the bank is on Friday.
- The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation has stated that only bidders with an existing bank charter will be allowed to study the financial details of Signature Bank.
- Signature Bank closed a few days ago, only two days after the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and less than a week after the closure of Silvergate Bank.
- All three were considered crypto-friendly financial institutions.
- The decision to force new buyers to exclude cryptocurrency from their business plan has been criticized by some crypto supporters and has been seen as a way of ruining the industry's reputation for retail investors.
- Signature Bank was reportedly under investigation by the Department of Justice and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for potentially lax monitoring that may have enabled money laundering.
- A lawsuit was recently filed against Signature Bank, claiming that it allowed "the commingling of the FTX exchange's customer funds within its proprietary, blockchain-based payments network, Signet."
- U.S. President Joe Biden has stated that U.S. taxpayers will not bear the cost of saving SVB and Signature.
