By
Steve Muchoki
April 25th, 2024
Silvergate is planning to sell more than 3.3 million shares of its Class A common stock, at $12 per share.
Silvergate Bank, a crypto-forward bank, has officially gone public on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). The initial public offering (IPO) has been a long time coming as plans to launch officially began last year.
On Nov. 7, the NYSE’s official Twitter account posted a tweet confirming the IPO celebration as well as Silvergate’s ticker – NYSE: $SI.
NYSE Opening Bell 🔔: Silvergate (NYSE: $SI) celebrates their IPO day https://t.co/FX3OQcP0dU
— NYSE 🏛 (@NYSE) November 7, 2019
A day before, Silvergate had announced that its stock would be set at $12 per share and plans to sell 3,333,333 shares of the company’s Class A common stock. In a press release, the company also announced that of the entire number of shares to be sold, Silvergate itself is only offering just over 800,000, while the company’s shareholders would offer the remaining 2.5 million. Before now, Silvergate had initially stated that it would set its price at $15 per share, with the intention to pull in $65 million.
The company has also said that it will use only funds from its own offering for expansion and debt-servicing, and will not meddle with the shareholders’ lot. Its statement reads:
“Silvergate intends to use the net proceeds from the proposed offering to fund organic growth and for general corporate purposes, which could include repayment of long-term debt, future acquisitions and other growth initiatives. Silvergate will not receive any proceeds from the sale of shares of common stock by the selling shareholders in the offering.”
Last year Silvergate in its filing with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) claimed that its crypto-related customers had increased by 369 from Sept 2017, and hit 483, representing a 323% spike. The company also revealed that the clients had a cumulative $1.7 billion in non-interest bearing deposits as of the third quarter of 2018. A few more specifics were also revealed, including the fact that most of the clients are crypto exchanges, which had a total of $793 million as deposits, with another $573 million accounted for by crypto-focused venture capitalist funds and hedge funds as well. Miners, protocol developers and other related companies account for $227 million. Now, a recent publication from the SEC, however, has it that the 483 number did increase to 750, in September.
The company’s amicable relationship with cryptocurrency projects has led it to create its own crypto offering called the Silvergate Exchange Network (SEN). This is basically a pool that includes several different cryptocurrency exchanges as well as investors and traders, that seeks to improve the relationship between all the different parties, and also contribute to “the efficient movement of U.S. dollars” among them.
Back in August, an official blog post from the Winklevoss Twins’ Gemini exchange, announced that it had joined the SEN in attempt to increase efficiency and speed of its fiat transfers. The announcement also specified that the application programming interface (API) from SEN has incorporated Gemini, which makes customer transactions autonomous and immediate, including withdrawals and deposits.