What happened
Silicon Valley Bank publicly framed Bitcoin lending as having entered a new institutional era, anchored on transparent collateralization and on-chain verification rather than the opaque pooled-credit model that defined the last cycle. CryptoBriefing reported the commentary on Sunday, citing SVB's view that the current structure bridges crypto liquidity with traditional finance risk frameworks.
The bank did not disclose specific loan books or counterparties in the cited piece, but the framing is consistent with how revived SVB, now operating under First Citizens since the March 2023 receivership, has approached its tech and innovation client base. The signal matters because SVB historically banked a large slice of the venture-backed crypto sector before its collapse, and its return to the conversation puts a mainstream lender's name back on Bitcoin credit.
Why it matters
The 2022 credit unwind erased roughly $40 billion of crypto lending capacity when Celsius, Voyager, BlockFi, and Genesis filed for bankruptcy in succession. What replaced it is structurally different. Loans are overcollateralized, often at 150% loan-to-value or tighter.
Collateral sits with qualified custodians like Coinbase Custody, Anchorage Digital, or BitGo, not on the lender's balance sheet. Liquidation triggers are codified, not discretionary. SVB's commentary reads as validation that this model is now mature enough for a regulated bank to underwrite at scale.
That's a different proposition from a Genesis-style unsecured loan to a hedge fund, and it's the version of crypto credit that compliance committees can actually approve. The institutional flow follows the plumbing, and the plumbing now exists.