Skip to content

Delving Deeper Into the Circle Debacle

Here we are going to go through a bit of Silicon Valley Bank's failure and illustrate how management's failure to use standard tools in standard ways blew up the bank.

As is now well-known, Circle's USDC went through a panic over the weekend when it was revealed that US$3.3 billion of their reserves were sitting inside Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) when that bank failed.

Roughly what happened at SVB is what you'd expect to happen if a car mechanic was appointed head of maintenance at an airline: the planes will crash because the mechanic cannot use the tools properly.

And then we are going to work through what this means, in turn, for Circle. Circle made some basic mistakes here that should never have happened. And none of this is coming from perfect hindsight: these are well-studied problems in finance with long-settled solutions.

This post is for subscribers only

Subscribe

Already have an account? Sign In

Latest

De-Dollarisation: More BRICS in the Wall

De-Dollarisation: More BRICS in the Wall

The BRICS nations, led by China and Russia, are accelerating efforts to reduce reliance on the US dollar in global trade and finance. Cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology are emerging as key tools in this de-dollarization push, even as BIS officials are considering nixing the mBridge project.