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Comment by hkhanna | Hacker News Reader

Personally, I don't think there's a real problem unless everyone panics.

Banks are well-regulated and stable and have been for decades. That said, my investors & cofounder have both expressed gratitude that our startup banks with Mercury and not SVB.

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> Personally, I don't think there's a real problem unless everyone panics.

And everyone is panicking.

Your words are almost the same as what the CEO of SVB said, and then immediately the VCs panicked, telling their portfolio companies to withdraw from SVB.

Technically, you are not “banking” with Mercury:

> Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services provided by Choice Financial Group and Evolve Bank & Trust®; Members FDIC.

Mercury has partner banks though, so you are still banking, just through an intermediary. The banks still hold the funds. (Depending on the product you use).

On that note, what's the deal with Evolve? I've seen them being the banking service provider for quite a few fintech companies already like Transferwise and BlockFi and else?

I was obviously very wrong. I've never had an HN comment age so poorly, so fast.

NB: Life lesson here is that a pretty reliable indicator of a crisis situation is when you keep mis-assessing the situation. The ground truth is either changing far faster than you can keep up with it, or conditions are well outside any of your expectations or experience. Or that the story / narrative / signals simply aren't coherent or consistent.

This is something I've noted in a number of different situations --- not just business or financial situations, though those would be among them.

Whilst banks may have lots of regulations (depending on their country of operation), banks do fail reasonably regularly. For example this list of US bank failures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_U.S._bank_fail...

This seems to reinforce the 'don't panic' aspect though -- depositors have never lost FDIC insured funds in the ~90 years it's been operating. And none of the depositors in the list of failed US banks lost a penny either.

Almost all banks on that list failed during the aftermath of Black Monday (1987) or during the Great Financial Crisis (2007-2010).

Yep banks that took on excessive risk in times of expansion.... And as SVB has failed today as has Silvergate recently, it seems we are looking at some level of issue.

What do you mean, there isn't a real problem? It's already been shut down.

Everyone panicked yesterday.

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