Silicon Valley Bank collapse: Crypto advocates call out 'opaque' financial system

euronews.com:

The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), the biggest bank failure in the US since the 2008 global recession, set off panic around the world as governments tried to assess its impact on tech start-ups, other financial institutions and even pension funds.

But crypto executives and investors - who have endured an extremely volatile market over the past year - seized on the moment to say “I told you so”.

“A lot of us believe that cryptocurrency and blockchain are superior technology for running the financial system,” said Brad Nickel, who hosts the crypto podcast Mission: DeFi.

“Silicon Valley Bank, FTX, the mortgage crisis of 2008, [they all become] an opportunity to point out that our financial system that we all everywhere in the world rely upon is opaque and centrally controlled by human beings,” he told Euronews Next.

“Regulators, investors, and banks could have seen how badly things were being run. The same is true of Silicon Valley Bank. We had no insights into what their financial situation was except for what they reported”.

Bitcoin, the world’s first decentralised currency, “was designed precisely because of bank collapses in 2008,” said Joe Donnelly, head of marketing at NiceHash, the leading cryptocurrency platform for mining.

“The SVB collapse highlights how Bitcoin is important to the economy; it provides an alternative to the banking system where you don't have to rely on someone else doing things that you're not necessarily even aware of,” he told Euronews Next.

When politicians and regulators speak against crypto, they “either don't understand how the system functions and the power and transparency it gives [them] to catch scammers before they do something wrong or, they're being disingenuous because they're