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开放银行与支付竞争

2025-08-14 07:17:05

金融行业的许多运作对行业外的人而言是可见的。你的信用卡基本上运作方式如你所理解的那样（除了偶尔关于次级后果的神话构建）。关于银行在信用卡上允许提供的条款的争论相对直接，非专业人士也能轻松理解。 但有些问题则隐藏在幕后，社会对此类问题的讨论并不一定立刻显现其后果。例如，关于《多德-弗兰克法案》第1033条的争议（甚至连这种表述方式都是一种有效的失眠良药）。 今年7月，摩根大通银行宣布打算对金融科技公司收取使用所谓“开放银行”数据的费用。这发生在一群银行试图通过诉讼让这项此前鲜为人知的法规不复存在的背景下。 几乎所有关于它的讨论都集中在“数据”上，但实际上这是一场关于支付方式的斗争，以及银行是否有权垄断并为其用户参与的所有经济活动收费，无论这些支付方式是否由银行本身运营。 明牌在桌面上：我曾任职于Stripe，这是一家提供金融基础设施的公司，帮助客户使用银行支持的（如信用卡等）和竞争性的（如账户对账户转账、稳定币等）支付方式。我并不一定支持我在个人空间中所表达的观点（我们印在每张支票上，而支票是设计成交给你从未见过的收银员或服务员的）。 开放银行的起源 《多德-弗兰克法案》是在2008年金融危机后通过的。它包括了必要的改革措施，以及实际上是对银行通过发放低质量抵押贷款而获得巨额利润，并让纳税人承担坏账后果的一种部分协商解决方式。 相关地，消费者金融保护局（CFPB）在2024年底完成了对开放银行的规则制定。从2010年法案通过到2024年规则制定完成，这中间的延迟表明这是一个复杂的过程。 值得注意的是，通过这项规则的CFPB是拜登政府时期的CFPB。我在专业领域尽量保持中立，但不得不客观指出，政治派系对CFPB的看法如何。 CFPB在金融行业和金融科技界并不被广泛喜爱。批评者认为CFPB更像是一个由参议员伊丽莎白·沃伦主导的“单人秀”，而不是一个联邦机构。这并不公平。实际上，CFPB的工作人员非常聪明，他们预见到沃伦的偏好，并通过规则制定来实现这些目标，而无需她亲自撰写法律或说服国会投票通过。 正如我去年12月在讨论“去银行化”话题时提到的，支持第二任特朗普竞选活动的有影响力人士，包括金融科技和加密货币投资者，希望看到CFPB被削弱。他们基本上得到了想要的结果。在新政府初期，CFPB就被削弱了。 出人意料的是，加密货币行业推动的一项政策，由于对大银行决策的不满，很快被大银行用于商业利益，使加密货币行业陷入困境。在选举前，银行政策研究所（BPI）和肯塔基银行协会起诉以阻止CFPB的规则制定。我认为一个知情的人会明白他们的法律论点只是借口。他们的政策论点，与开放银行的规范意图相悖，我将在下面讨论。 最初，CFPB积极捍卫这项诉讼，但新任的CFPB在6月宣布打算放弃。这在华盛顿引发了混乱，因为开放银行由CFPB管理，但却是加密货币公司所喜欢的金融监管体系的一部分。 交易所主要通过在加密货币购买中收取手续费来盈利，所谓的“入局”（将资金从传统金融系统转移到加密生态系统）则允许他们获得其他收入，例如从稳定币发行方获得的利息分成，或客户持有的加密货币质押收益。 交易所希望以最低成本完成入局，这通常是通过ACH借记完成的。他们的目标是新用户通过聚合器授权从银行账户扣款。然后，借记几乎是免费的，不仅对首次交易，而且对后续使用相同银行信息的交易也是如此。（交易所承担一定的信用风险，因为借记交易直到大约两天后才确认成功，且可能在之后被撤销，如果涉及欺诈。这些问题是Coinbase上季度损失了约2亿美元。） 银行对开放银行进行商业化利用的论点 你可以想象银行和金融科技谈判者之间正在进行快速的来回讨论。行业对公开讨论这些谈判存在一些犹豫，部分是因为谈判本身很微妙，部分是因为一些人担心在其他业务关系中遭到报复。 但幸运的是，银行已经直接或通过其行业协会发布了他们的论点。这些论点并不特别有说服力。 最好的论点是银行在这里承担风险，他们希望对风险进行定价。如果银行授权第三方使用开放银行，该第三方可能会利用它从银行账户中提取资金。如果银行客户授权了一笔交易但后来后悔了，比如是给诈骗机构的，他们可能会要求银行赔偿。 银行承担这种欺诈风险，与他们支付假支票时的风险类似，直到他们通过撤销交易来追回资金。他们并不总是能成功撤销交易。 这在结构上与《条例E》对借记卡和《条例Z》对信用卡交易的规定相似。如果消费者在信用卡交易中受到侵害，银行根据法规必须承担责任，而不是像信用卡行业普遍豁免的50美元免赔额。银行对信用卡业务非常满意，因为发卡机构可以印钞，但《条例E》涵盖了几乎所有形式的电子支付和几乎所有可以想象的滥用形式。（非限制性例子，请参见《不重要，这是条例E》这首歌。） 但账户对账户的支付更像是支票。事实上，“ACH借记”的自动清算所部分指的是作为支票支付的清算所。 银行偶尔会因支票账户的欺诈损失而承担费用。他们通常不能直接对支票收费；客户期望自由书写支票，企业期望以象征性费用存入支票。当然，如果你建议支票费用随支票金额增加而增加，那在董事会会议上会被嘲笑。这是支票兑现的荒谬说法，不是受监管的金融机构或其客户所期望的。 在2024年致股东的信中，迪蒙哀叹典型的零售支票账户业务是低利润或负利润的。作为一名经常阅读摩根大通股东信的读者，我知道摩根大通为何经营这种业务：这是他们与家庭建立关系的基础，他们主要通过信用卡发行、房贷发放等来盈利。这种账户业务也是有意设计的，以对低收入、低资产的消费者收取较少费用，并在与机构的长期关系中可靠地增加盈利。 存款业务，作为“堡垒资产负债表”的重要组成部分，最宝贵的是吸引退休人员、小型企业等持有较大余额的人群，这些人在储蓄账户中获得0.01%的利息或在支票账户中获得零利息。为了获得这些客户，银行会提供账户给例如想兑现暑期工资的青少年，尽管该账户在接下来的十年里可能对银行来说是负利润的。 因此，建议银行通过监控交易和在授权错误时支付费用来威胁零售支票账户的可用性，是对熟悉银行业务的人的侮辱。 支票账户也是社会期望银行提供的公共服务。这是作为对银行在消费债务发行等行业的有利可图垄断以及显性或隐性纳税人支持其运营的回报。摩根大通最近就通过现金收购一家失败银行的13亿美元甜头支票而深刻体会到了这一点。 我们已经在金融行业和公民社会方面取得了巨大的进展，几乎覆盖了所有人。但这并不意味着“因此银行有权对社会上的每一笔交易收取费用”。 摩根大通非常擅长提供客户真正想要使用的支付产品。以摩根大通的“卓越白金卡”为例，据我粗略观察，大约有一半的金融科技风险投资公司和管理团队使用它来支付晚餐费用。 当摩根大通无法成功说服客户使用其支付渠道时，它不应该向接受业务的公司收取费用。摩根大通应该明白，开放银行和账户对账户支付本质上与支票类似：它们在日常业务中几乎免费地促进这些支付，作为更大服务包的一部分。 此外，银行还声称开放银行会导致屏幕抓取。当然，作为一名金融科技专家，我更希望看到高质量的API和合理的安全保证。一些银行，如摩根大通，利用了他们十五年的提前通知期来开发这些API。 其他银行则有其他优先事项，现在却用他们的不作为来声称屏幕抓取是威胁。（人们不禁注意到这种“先诱饵后切换”的策略：首先说聚合器必须使用官方API而不是屏幕抓取，然后声称任何查看开发者文档的人都同意支付其收入75%的费用。） 此外，银行还声称金融科技公司利用了银行在服务客户方面所进行的大量技术投资。这显然是选择性记忆。2024年，Stripe的支付交易量超过1.4万亿美元。仅凭这些交易，这意味着Stripe单独支付了大约200亿美元的交换费。 二十亿。美元。仅来自一家公司。 在现金200亿美元支票后，再抱怨金融科技公司利用你的IT支出，这听起来有点讽刺，但确实如此。 支付方式的创新是一件好事 信用卡对银行来说是一项非常有利可图的业务。所有大小企业都能通过这些渠道与全球客户进行交易，这是对世界的一大贡献。 但信用卡并不是也不能是支付方式的最终答案。作为社会，我们应该继续创造人们想要的东西。有时，自然购买这些东西的方式可能与信用卡或信用卡商业模式的假设不兼容。 最近，一些人对稳定币表现出相当大的热情。稳定币的销售点之一是你可以绕过传统金融系统的渠道。然而，这种说法并不准确地预测了具有实质性交易量的稳定币业务的实际运作。这些业务通常采用某种“加密货币莫西干”模式，前面是稳定币，后面是银行转账。这些银行转账通常由开放银行大大促进。这是稳定币业务增长故事的必要部分，因为它们越来越多地试图与实体经济互动，而不是仅限于加密货币投机。实体经济想要的是美元，而不关心你的后台数据库品牌。 人们，特别是处于社会经济边缘的人，越来越多地使用并非简单的塑料卡片的东西。有时是Cash App或Venmo，有时是直接集成在手机中的钱包，或者某个YC公司下周发明的新东西。我们的国际同行，如日本（以及我们的对手），拥有蓬勃发展的支付生态系统。 开发这些创新几乎总是需要接触银行系统，因为最终，企业想要的是美元。如果我们允许银行对任何与他们的信用卡业务竞争的交易收取费用，这将扼杀一些创新。这将是不幸的，因为客户和企业从选择中受益。 它还帮助我们保持银行的警觉。该行业往往在核心服务上陷入“睡走”状态。银行应用程序在过去几年实际上变得相当不错，并非仅仅反映其一般的技术能力。他们经过数十年的忽视后，有意识地投资，因为他们看到年轻一代越来越多地转向应用程序，然后意识到这最终会威胁存款业务。 银行并不天生反对提供优质产品！他们经常这么做！但如果你稍微改变问题的角度，他们就会高兴地让任何威胁其“肥沃”收入流的人破产。在那个世界里，你可以永远使用1999年的银行网站和Internet Explorer 5.0浏览器。（如果你觉得这不太可能，不妨问问你的韩国朋友。） 最近也有关于银行支持性决策的一些争议。我对这个问题有细致的看法，但若允许银行窥探客户的经济逻辑来决定定价结构，你就是在赋予他们选择赢家和输家的能力。 据报道，摩根大通希望对开放银行实施两档定价体系：一种是数据访问费，另一种是如果有人使用这些数据访问来促进支付时收取的更高费用。从摩根大通的角度来看，这些是相同的产品。同样的服务器存储相同的数据。同样的CSR随时准备在客户数据泄露时提供帮助。但其中一种方式与摩根大通的偏好相悖，因此他们收取更高的费用以阻止这种行为。 我们不应允许银行养成向不喜欢的企业发送催款信的习惯，以破坏其经济。这些催款信将不可避免地被滥用，包括以任何可想象的直接商业利益之外的方式。

两个美国，一个银行分行，和5万美元现金

2025-03-06 01:36:15

在科学领域，他们称之为“文件柜问题”：那些未能达到显著性或得出“错误”结论的研究最终会被隐藏起来，从而造成对现实的扭曲印象。

因此，我从银行程序的“文件柜”中拯救出一个故事：两个美国，一个银行分行，以及5万美元现金。

一份时尚杂志发表了一篇关于大额现金提取的文章，这与我对银行业现实的理解不符。我烧掉了数千美元，并花了一年时间进行调查。现在，我开始怀疑这篇文章的真实性，因为我对相关背景有了更深入的了解。

假设你向银行申请提取5万美元现金。

美国有成千上万的银行，每家银行都独立运营，拥有自己的程序、员工和情况。它们大致上都受到监管、行业惯例、文化以及对威胁环境的感知所约束。没有一家银行、银行家或银行客户是完全典型的。但如果我们忽略现实世界的复杂性，为了阐明一个更大的观点，这里就是当客户要求提取大额现金时，银行期望发生的事情。

银行不会期望其首席执行官或合规主管对每一次现金提取都单独做出决定。它设计了流程来实现其（以及监管机构和其他利益相关者）所期望的结果，并培训员工如何执行这些流程。这些流程非常明确地考虑了这种交易。

柜员或个人银行经理，无论资历如何，都应确认客户身份，并思考这是否是该客户通常进行的交易。也许他们经营着现金密集型业务，每隔几周就需要提取5万美元来为他们运营的自动取款机补充现金？如果是这样，要么员工对此有个人了解，要么这些信息会记录在他们的账户上。（该记录是在银行对其现金管理需求非常熟悉之后才被写下的。）

很少有客户会定期提取5万美元现金。我们进入流程图的下一步。此时，银行员工会开始使用一些混合的真相、半真半假的话，甚至善意的谎言。这些说法旨在“允许我们准备现金”。实际上，美国所有分行中，这一说法经常是数学上成立的。一个更接近事实的变体是，分行实际上确实持有比5万美元略多的现金。分行需要现金来满足客户的日常需求，而客户不能被允许一次性提取全部现金，因为这将导致在重新调配现金之前，数十甚至数百名客户的需求无法得到满足。还有一种虚假的说法，即在某些分行，这种操作实际上和兑换一张20美元纸币一样简单，但该谎言在机构层面上被合理化，以保护这位客户免受自身伤害。

许多从未提取过5万美元现金的人，突然想要提取5万美元现金，通常没有充分的理由。银行出于法律和道德责任，会更倾向于不协助这种行为，即使他们并不知情。在所有提出这种请求的人群中，银行知道，作为法人实体，它对这些情况有实际的了解。

因此，员工很可能会说，银行有一项规定，要求客户在提取大额现金前提前几天通知。这将“让我们有时间准备现金”。实际上，银行确实有一个号码，分行经理可以拨打以要求特殊调配现金，但这种做法主要是为了增加流程的复杂性。诈骗和其他形式的剥削依赖于孤立受害者并施加压力，使其做出错误决定。强制要求冷却期可以有效阻止一些诈骗行为。

当它有效运作时，社会会获得新闻报道的常规好处，公关部门会抱怨几句但继续配合，纽约的“蝙蝠电话”会立即得到回应，广告商则会向愿意付费的客户出售他们的产品。

怀疑的来源

因此，Vox媒体通过发言人发布的声明，实际上彻底解决了我对编辑流程的疑虑……但这并未解决我对银行流程的疑虑。

欺诈调查员、执法者和记者通常会先凭直觉开始，然后补充客观事实。我的直觉告诉我，这不可能。

这篇文章实际上并未提及银行或分行的名称，尽管故事明确发生在其中，尽管该交易的失败是叙事的核心，尽管多次提到与该事件完全无关的公司。该交易并未按照银行预期的方式进行，即当有人要求提取全部储蓄账户现金时。文章中提供的物理细节在你所处的世界中极为罕见。

该文章声称的核查流程让我感到……在文章部分内容不准确的情况下，这种核查并不牢固。

例如，有很多方法可以“审查银行取款”。这种审查可能涉及五名以上人员，而我在不同场合几乎参与了所有这些审查。一些“审查”是低摩擦但低可靠性的，比如让某人查看手机截图或银行对账单打印件。

正如我曾告诉一位同事的那样：打印的银行对账单的证明力有限，因为一个聪明的高中生可以伪造它。

金融行业有各种方法来解决这个问题，具体取决于他们愿意投入多少时间和精力进行调查。例如，你可以致电出具该对账单的金融机构，宣布你正在与他们的客户在一个房间内，然后要求他们的客户在公开电话线中朗读该机构的对账单副本。许多人认为，由于安全原因，没有银行会这样做。当然不是！这在现实中非常常见，下周将有数以万计的此类操作发生。显然，这比那些由非银行人员保管的对账单副本更可靠。

我意识到，评论犯罪受害者的社会经济地位是不礼貌的，特别是他们可能不会选择这样描述自己。不幸的是，社会经济地位对于理解2023年10月31日发生在1 Flatbush Avenue的事件至关重要。请允许我简要回顾我的困惑来源。

这位外部人士认为《The Cut》文章中的一个主线是，作者因为自己的财务状况危在旦夕，所以做出了非理性的5万美元取款决定。以下是部分非连续段落的原文，我用粗体标出了这位外部人士似乎误解的陈述。

Calvin（诈骗团队成员）想知道我目前在银行账户里有多少钱。我告诉他我有两个账户——支票账户和储蓄账户——总余额略高于8万美元。作为一名在波动行业工作的自由职业者，我保留了一笔相当可观的应急资金，也预留了现金用于年底缴税，因为我的工资单上没有预扣税款。

我几乎笑了出来。我告诉他我确信我的丈夫，他为一个经济适用房非营利组织工作，为我们的托儿费用制作了详尽的电子表格，绝不会是秘密的毒品走私者。“我相信你，但即使如此，你的通信可能正在被监控，”Calvin说，“你不能和他谈论这件事。你应假设自己处于危险中，正在被监视。你不能有任何侥幸心理。”

5万美元是一笔巨款。我花了好几年才存下这笔钱，每次完成一个大项目就存几千美元。其中一部分是我从祖父那里继承来的，他去世前费尽心思为他的孙子孙女设立了这笔遗产。有时我会想象，如果我必须在一天内花掉这笔钱，我会如何使用。我可以一次性支付一年的托儿费用，我可以将这笔钱用于我一直想要的研究生学位，我甚至可以为多个家庭提供数月的住房。也许，无意中我就是这样做的；我偶尔会想，诈骗者可能已经花掉了这笔钱。

因为这笔钱是为应急和缴税准备的，所以我试图假装自己没有这笔钱——它不是用来花的。起初，我担心今年无法负担我的税款，但后来我的会计师告诉我，我可以将盗窃造成的损失作为抵税项。因此，从财务角度来看，只要我不再遇到真正的紧急情况，我就能安然度过。

这些陈述以及其他文章中的内容，让我形成了一个特定的印象：作者属于中上阶层，她与许多处于不稳定或收入不高的工作环境中的个体一样，有一定程度的财务焦虑，并且被专业的诈骗者以一种计算好的方式利用了这种财务不安全感。

当我向朋友Byrne Hobart讲述这些相同的陈述时，他笑着说：“啊，家族财富。”

现在，我将添加三个真实陈述，希望你能以美国银行柜员的理解方式理解这笔交易。

作者的房屋净值，对于为其发放抵押贷款的银行来说，远远超过纽约市中位数家庭收入的十年总和。作者是家族慈善基金会的主席，根据其最近向美国国税局提交的年度报告，该基金会持有约200万美元的可交易证券。而作者的家族在康涅狄格州的庄园，曾在当地报纸上被报道，强调其拥有两百年历史。

发现这些事实极大地改变了我对作者为何未被银行员工询问大额取款目的的看法。它不再看起来像是一次流程上的意外疏漏，而更像是对一位富裕且显然精明的客户的常规现金管理，其家庭资源和可能的财务未来对银行来说都是完全透明的。

在这种情况下，银行是否更希望柜员再问一个问题？也许。但银行不会因此彻夜难眠。

美国银行曾被《纽约时报》询问过这笔交易：“我们有广泛的措施来警告客户避免诈骗，”美国银行发言人William P. Halldin通过电子邮件表示，“该银行拒绝进一步评论。”（《纽约时报》根据政策，拒绝确认该交易发生的分行。）

因此，我们回到之前的问题：能否找到一个机构，披露该交易声称发生的地点？Vox媒体、作者以及《纽约时报》都被询问过，但目前我们还没有答案。

进入金融犯罪执法网络

美国银行是世界上最大的存款机构之一，它会可靠地在客户以现金形式存入或取出1万美元或更多时提交货币交易报告（CTR）。我认为，FinCEN不太可能向任何人提供这些报告。

但最近在信息自由法案（FOIA）司法判例中出现的一个发展让我有些希望：根据第九巡回法院的裁决，现在允许通过FOIA获取“统计汇总数据”。我曾希望FinCEN会回答一个简单的统计汇总问题，而不是展示一份非常私密的货币交易报告。

因此，我提交了一份FOIA请求，编号2025-FINF-00126，要求进行以下统计计算：

2023年10月31日，在布鲁克林地区，有多少份货币交易报告是针对4.8万到5.2万美元之间的现金提取提交的？按分行地址分类。

FinCEN高效处理了这份FOIA请求，仅用不到两周时间就给出了明确答案：不。它提出了第九巡回法院所拒绝的论点，即回应请求需要创建新的记录（SQL查询结果），因此它没有义务这么做。它还援引了一项广泛适用于FinCEN许多记录的法律豁免条款。在阅读相关法律后，我认为FinCEN很可能拥有这些法律条款的正当理由，即使它不太可能在统计汇总问题上胜诉。

该请求值得尝试。

纽约的“最佳警察”（FOIL）暂时成为我的工具

Vox媒体声明称作者已提交了警方报告。

从事实核查者的角度来看，警方报告起到了一个有用的警示作用。在警方报告上撒谎是一种犯罪行为。这并不是特别严重的犯罪（属于A类轻罪，也包括“把饮料洒在别人身上”和“偷一瓶汰渍”）。

任何人都可以猜测纽约检察官是否经常执行这项法律，特别是针对我们这个社会阶层的人。但警方报告仍然是一个有用的施莱辛格点（Schelling point）：新闻出版物可以指向警方报告，并说“大家都知道警方报告意味着什么”，然后我们所有人都假装警方报告中没有谎言。

在这里，警察不需要驳斥记者的幻想。如果某家出版物被问及此事，它会立即转向“我们并未同意或相信警方报告中的任何内容。我们只是中立地报道了警方报告这一可证明的事实。显然，我们提及警方报告并无其他意图。”

但即使警方报告中有时包含谎言，它们仍然有用，因为它们建立了极难事后篡改的书面记录。

我对警方报告中的两个事实特别感兴趣。

一个是元数据：这份报告是什么时候收到的？（如果这份报告是因事实核查者要求而创建的，那显然读起来就不一样了。）另一个是：在文章发表之前，作者是否一直声称该交易发生在1 Flatbush Avenue——即唯一可能发生的地点？

我尝试通过多种方法获取这份警方报告。到2024年6月，我变得不耐烦，准备迫使纽约警察局遵循法律，向我提供这份报告。

警方报告，像许多公共记录一样，可以通过信息自由法案（FOIL）获取，这是纽约州的法律，与联邦的FOIA类似。法律规定，收到请求后需在五个工作日内确认，然后在二十个工作日（或合理所需时间）内发布记录或援引法律豁免条款说明为何无法披露。

我于2024年6月26日提交了FOIL-2024-056-16750请求。在最后一天，纽约警察局更新了其时间表，声称需要到11月才能找到警方报告。好吧，这公平。我自己也正忙于购房和搬家，而我唯一的一份时尚杂志纸质版正挂在地下室的纸箱里，我们正在重新粉刷。也许纽约警察局，年度预算高达58亿美元，也相当忙碌。

11月来了，11月也过去了。

最终，担心圣诞老人不会送给我最想要的礼物，我开始向纽约警察局施压。我使用了我称之为“危险职业”的语气和姿态。三次留言，一次电话，毫无结果。

因此，在2025年2月，经过六个月的等待，我拿出我的通话记录，写了一份FOIL申诉。在简要回顾了程序历史后，这封信做了一些精心计算的“刀锋”操作：

该请求于2024年6月26日提交，已经超过六个月。最初被分配的截止日期是2024年11月4日，超过两个月前。尽管我通过在线“联系机构”表格请求了三次更新，并留下了一次电话留言，但至今仍未收到纽约警察局的非自动回复。

根据法律，对FOIL请求的文件回应时间是从确认请求之日起的二十个工作日。纽约警察局在超过100个工作日后仍未提供文件，这构成了对请求的实质性的拒绝。

我因此对纽约警察局的拒绝提出申诉，并要求其提供FOIL请求中描述的文件，或说明其无法提供的理由。

纽约警察局的一位律师回复了，预计在法定时限（10个工作日）内作出回应。实质性的回应称，该申诉已无意义，因为……在收到我的申诉后，记录访问官员已决定纽约警察局确实保留警方报告，并且可以响应FOIL请求。

哦，快乐的日子。

警方报告中包含了一份2023年10月31日警方记录的陈述。我轻度修改了警方的速记，并纠正了一些无关紧要的拼写错误：

投诉人/受害者进一步表示，涉案人员声称投诉人/受害者需要支付以避免被逮捕。投诉人/受害者表示，她于2023年10月31日下午3点10分从位于1 Flatbush Avenue的美国银行提取了5万美元的美元现金。

就这样，我们有了一个可靠的证据链，指向一个已知时间点的物理世界中的主张。该交易被声称发生在1 Flatbush Avenue。数月后，在撰写她当天回忆时，作者提供了一个看似无关紧要的细节，即她上楼去见柜员。

这个看似无关紧要的细节，如果一个人有非常特定的兴趣，并愿意投入不合理的精力进行验证，是可以独立核实的。在全世界所有城镇的所有银行分行中，唯一一个在二楼厚玻璃后等待布鲁克林名流的美国银行分行，确实是1 Flatbush Avenue。

如果该警方报告，或任何其他可信机构的文件，指出了例如266 Broadway这样的地点，那这篇文章就会完全不同。

至于《The Cut》文章的其余部分，我对时尚杂志上的任何内容都没有有根据的观点，除了银行业。

一场非常芝加哥式的赌博

2025-01-25 03:42:29

本专栏不提供投资建议，因为我并非注册投资顾问。这不仅是一个强制性的免责声明，更是一个警告。我们在下面将讨论一些具体的证券，而我并非仅仅无法推荐它们。

金融行业进行着一种奇怪的炼金术，将价值在时间和空间中传送。通常来说，本专栏更关注其运作机制，而非交易本身。但一位自称“保守收入投资者”的交易爱好者最近向我提到了一笔资本筹集，它包含了所有要素：美国PMC 2020-2024文化的回响、复杂的金融结构、一个新颖的网络应用程序用于资金转移，以及背景中的加密货币公司，还有市政政治。因此，这似乎完全符合本专栏的讨论范围。

该市政所在地恰好是芝加哥，我的家乡（在经历了20年的日本生活后），也是我现在居住的地方。因此，作为一名芝加哥市民、纳税人以及相对具备财务知识的人，我感到一些公民责任，公开表达以下观点：见鬼去吧，芝加哥。

但在我们进入当代的诡计之前，必须回溯数十年，因为市政政治与这些诡计密不可分。

芝加哥长期以来想要建立赌场

芝加哥和整个伊利诺伊州的政治体系都显得极其不严肃。他们通过持续高薪雇佣公共部门员工（主要在芝加哥，包括警察、消防员和教师）以及低税收政策抵押了其未来。降低公共部门员工的总薪酬、违背先前协商的延期薪酬（退休人员的养老金和医疗保障）或提高税收至合理水平，这些在政治上都不被接受。其中一个原因是伊利诺伊州宪法（第13条第5款）规定公共雇员养老金具有神圣性。当然，宪法并非自然法则，而是由一个同样不严肃的政治体系达成的妥协。

长期关注州和地方政治的人士可能会认为，芝加哥几乎从未采取任何行动而不为政治上有关系的人预留特例。当地对这种社会关系的称呼是“有影响力”或“被有影响力的人所影响”。例如，Bally’s Chicago, Inc.（以下简称BCI）董事会成员的专业历史中就包含了许多这种特例的实例，这些历史记录在说明书中有详细说明。

那么这里的特例是什么？在美国政治中，对种族或民族少数群体的定义是一个极具争议的话题，主要因为是否被归入该群体将决定一个人是否能够获得实际利益。争议点常常包括：亚洲裔美国人是否属于少数群体，或者古巴裔美国人是否属于西班牙裔等。

芝加哥为自己在该定义中留出了一个豁口，允许其将任何个人或群体随意指定为少数群体，且这种指定是临时的、未报告的、不受监督的。这听起来像是我在歪曲芝加哥的立场。请参见说明书中的截图和解释：

引用说明书内容：

根据第[最终]条的规定，资格认定是基于个案进行的，且没有详尽或最终的群体或个人名单，该名单由芝加哥市认定为符合少数群体标准。然而，如果芝加哥市在未来认定任何其他群体或个人属于该条款，那么这些群体的成员将满足A类资格标准。

现在，公正的人们看到“由芝加哥市认定的社会上处于不利地位的群体或个人，即那些在美国社会中遭受种族或民族偏见或文化歧视的群体或个人”这一表述时，会注意到“好吧，表面上看，这显然包括例如犹太裔美国人或爱尔兰裔美国人。我们作为一个国家和城市确实有一些令人遗憾的历史，但美国没有一个真正有思想的人会认为爱尔兰裔美国人属于‘种族或民族少数群体’的常见定义。”因此，这里使用了“少数群体”的大写形式。

您必须向芝加哥市询问他们在此条款下做出的临时例外清单。然而，长期关注芝加哥市政政治的人士可能会指出，这样做几乎没有实际意义。

BCI必须向芝加哥市民出售价值2.5亿美元的股票。这可能是因为富裕的芝加哥市民并非傻瓜，而经济条件较差的市民也未必有2.5亿美元的现金储备。

因此，Bally’s引入了一种新颖的结构。

简而言之，这种结构允许投资者通过信用购买股票，由Bally’s提供信贷，并通过未来股票分红来偿还。如果您对具体操作机制感兴趣，可以参见说明书中的详细说明，但复杂的法律条文只是为这张截图做借口：

什么是“可追溯的次级贷款”？我很高兴您问了这个问题。Bally’s为BCI提供了数亿美元资金以用于开发。这些资金来自哪里？通常是一些股权和债务融资的混合，这在几乎所有复杂的商业房地产交易中都很常见。根据Bally’s最近的10-K报告，他们从成熟投资者那里获得的长期债务成本为每年5.x%（如果他们今天锁定这笔资金，成本会更高）。

作为Bally’s的发行方，Bally’s通过BCHC向BCI提供资金，BCI则欠BCHC一笔债务，这是一笔内部的借据。此次资本发行将取消该内部借据，并将其替换为次级贷款。说明书并未引用Bally’s左口袋向右口袋收取的利率，但确实引用了次级贷款的利率：每年11%复利按季度计算。

路演中强调了这种杠杆的非追索权性质。再次引用Triibe的报道：

该贷款是非追索权贷款，Loop Capital Markets的Sidney Dillard在信息会上解释道。她说：“这意味着您对这笔贷款不承担责任。”

我并不是一个曾经出售过SEC注册证券的人，但我了解，一旦这样做，就必须在如何同时做到以下两件事上格外小心：a) 销售一种产品，以及 b) 描述该产品的运作方式而不陷入欺诈。

因此，我不会将“非追索权”描述为一种不承担责任的贷款。我有一个非追索权抵押贷款。我非常、非常负责偿还这笔贷款。如果我不偿还，我预计很快就会失去抵押的房产。这里的“非追索权”意味着贷款人不能追索您的其他资产或收入，例如通过起诉您获得裁决，然后迫使您交出储蓄账户或您在小型企业LLC中的权益。

次级贷款是Bally’s实体之间的严格贷款，而非A类权益持有者与任何Bally’s实体之间的交易。这些贷款在未来的利润支付顺序中优先于A类权益（我们再次需要那个星号！）。预期是Bally’s会针对每名股东的记录进行还款，但不会实际使股东承担义务，同时保留赌场实际产生的现金流，最终释放股东的债务负担，而Bally’s会声称他们并未实际承担该债务。

此时，股东将拥有他们可能认为完全清白的权益份额。

现在，Bally’s预测许多股东在这项投资中将面临严重亏损。（哇，这是一个非常有力的句子。）说明书，同上，第23页：

鉴于开发、建造、开业和运营如此规模的赌场度假村项目的资本密集性，我们目前预计Bally’s Chicago OpCo在永久赌场和度假村开始运营大约三到五年后，才会有任何可用于分配的现金流。

假设最有利的估计，A类-1股东将拥有250美元的权益来保障25,000美元的投资，以及未来约34,000美元的义务（以11%的年利率对初始本金24,750美元进行三年复利计算）。这表明持有者的权益价值计划为负数，而任何成熟的投资者都不会为该投资支付25,000美元，因为这可能相当于他们认为该投资在三年后价值约负9,000美元。

从这个角度看，这项投资似乎具有掠夺性。但请放心，芝加哥人，Bally’s会站在你们这边。你们不必担心由于缺乏内在价值而无法出售股票，因为你们实际上无法出售股票。说明书，同上，第179页（标题为“未来可出售的股份”），以及文档其他部分。

A类-4股东，即没有名义债务的股东，他们以25,000美元现金购买股票，只有在Bally’s批准的情况下才能出售。当然，这在私人股权中并不罕见。Bally’s在发行前承诺对未来的潜在买家进行种族歧视？这倒是不常见。

A类-1、A类-2和A类-3股票的持有者在次级贷款完全偿还之前无法出售股票。

人们不禁想知道，高级芝加哥官员是否会在2030年进行路演来解释发生了什么。

赌场不会直接分配利润

虽然自然预期是参与赌场的利润，但说明书帮助澄清了这一点。所谓的“可用于分配的现金”并不一定与利润一一对应。它……好吧，参见说明书第22和23页的讨论，包括以下摘录。

我们和Bally’s Chicago OpCo打算按季度分别向股东分配相当于“可用于分配的现金”和“OpCo可用于分配的现金”的100%。但实际分配金额可能会因我们和Bally’s Chicago OpCo从运营中产生现金流的能力以及我们的现金流需求而波动，这些需求可能受到我们或Bally’s Chicago OpCo的高级债务偿还、资本支出、潜在扩张机会、融资替代方案的可用性、未来债务的偿还需求或其他流动性需求的影响，以及整体行业和商业状况，包括我们永久赌场和度假村在芝加哥的建设和发展速度。我们的董事会将完全自由决定如何使用可用于分配的现金，包括支付股息。我们或Bally’s Chicago OpCo未来可能承担的任何债务都可能限制我们支付股息或分配的能力，甚至可能禁止我们进行分配，或减少可用于分配的现金和OpCo可用于分配的现金。

现在，作为一个在芝加哥成长起来的人，我父亲经常抱怨芝加哥商业地产的“精明操作”，我可以迅速列举大约24种不同的方式，让这家运营公司a) 将资金转移给其他公司实体，b) 从而减少可用于分配的现金。

作为代表性但非限制性的例子，您可能可以自行选择技术性服务的供应商，从母公司到孙辈子公司。当然，存在某种名义上的预期，即这些服务的价格应为市场价，但例如赌场忠诚度会计软件和特定连锁企业的现有用户数据库的市场价是多少？低资源投资者如何可能对拥有所有必要数据来评估该资产的实体发起法律挑战。在拉斯维加斯，赌场必须计算并认真向赌徒传达其优势（house edge）。而在芝加哥，显然不是这样。

这需要一种在芝加哥商业地产中极为常见的“精明操作”。这是作为结构中的次级合作伙伴所面临的一个持续风险，尤其是当没有一个与您同样受其影响的高级合作伙伴。

请谨慎选择您的赞助商。

此次发行的税务影响

假设，尽管这几乎不可能，因为这是非法的（Reg T），但您拥有一个典型的美国经纪账户，并用250美元购买了25,000美元的可交易证券。这些证券会定期产生股息支付。您会定期支付经纪利息，因为您从经纪处借了钱来购买这些证券。

在典型情况下，您会就这些利息支付所得税，因为它们属于收入。您不能简单地将保证金利息与该收入相抵后缴税。您必须列举扣除项，然后可以在附表A中扣除投资费用，如出版物550所述。当然，您可以将这些细节交给您的会计师，因为细节变得相当复杂和繁琐。

如果您不列举扣除项，如许多低收入纳税人一样，您必须当然地就全部利息收入缴税。如果您抗议说您实际上没有收到任何利息收入，因为这些利息已被经纪用于支付保证金利息，IRS不会对此表示最大同情。

Bally’s在此次发行的结构中涉及了一些非常有创意的专业人士，他们意识到上述问题可能会破坏该结构的适用性，因此……采用了某种理论。我将直接引用该理论，来自说明书，原文如下。我已将其中重要部分加粗：

美国国内税收法典第305条规定，如果一家公司向部分股东分配财产，而其他股东在该公司的资产或盈余中拥有比例增加，那么这些其他股东可能被视为收到了可征税股息的分配。在此情况下，由于我们和Bally’s预计会将次级贷款视为“股票”以用于美国联邦所得税目的，因此“财产”分配可能会被视为对Bally’s Chicago, Inc.部分股东的支付，随着次级贷款的偿还进行。同样，针对A类-4权益的等值现金（“财产”）分配也将进行。此外，随着次级贷款的偿还，特别是偿还原始本金的部分，A类-1、A类-2和A类-3权益持有者在Bally’s Chicago, Inc.的资产或盈余中的比例可能被视为增加。因此，这种增加可能被视为第305条下的“视为分配”或根据其他理论被视为应税收入。然而，根据与第305条相关的财政部法规和其他IRS行政指导，某些以优先股投资形式资助公司并随后通过财产分配系统性消除的融资安排，不会导致对其他股东的“视为分配”。这些法规是否适用于我们A类-1、A类-2和A类-3权益的持有者尚不确定。尽管存在疑问，我们打算采取这样的立场，即美国持有者不会被视为从我们或Bally’s收到“视为分配”，也不会因次级贷款的偿还而实现收入。然而，不能保证IRS不会采取相反立场，例如将美国持有者在我们盈余中的比例增加视为收到分配。在这种情况下，该“视为分配”将被征税为股息、资本返还或资本利得，如上文“— 分配”部分所述。美国持有者可能需要在没有实际收到现金的情况下承担美国联邦所得税。美国持有者应咨询自己的税务顾问，以了解第305条以及我们A类权益的任何其他潜在“视为收入”风险。

现在，我既不是律师，也不是税务会计师，而且在路演中没有仔细聆听。但这里的意思是：

Bally’s采取了立场，尽管他们承认IRS可能不同意，即A类-2、A类-3和A类-4权益的持有者只有在次级贷款完全偿还后才会实际获得收入。这意味着他们不需要在未实际收到现金分配的年份缴纳所得税。

不，他们要等到次级贷款完全偿还后，才立即对差额（例如他们的股票成本为250美元，而当时的市场价值为25,000美元）缴纳所得税。这将导致Bally’s认真地向IRS提交文件，说明例如一个低收入芝加哥市民刚刚从他们那里获得了不到25,000美元的收入，应该为此缴税。当然，您可以在不立即获得现金的情况下获得收入；这在科技行业很常见，并且是许多结构设计的原因，以避免其后果，这对早期职业员工来说可能很痛苦。

这些税款将主要由持有者自行承担，因为几乎没有任何可能的宇宙中，一家实际健康的运营企业股票价值25,000美元会支付5,000美元的普通股息。市场会调整股票价值以反映极其丰厚的股息流，从而调整税款。

财务上成熟的投资者可能会通过例如以股票价值为抵押进行借贷来应对这种税务炸弹。但鉴于该股票未公开上市、转让限制、金额较小等因素，对于此次发行来说，这基本上是不可能的。另一个选择当然是出售股票，但只能卖给Bally’s批准的人。

税务驱动的交易当然是有动机的交易，幸运的买家可能会从中获得一点好处，尤其是因为他们可能比最初的股票买家更加成熟，并且需要考虑的风险更少（因为赌场在税务炸弹爆发前可能已有数年的运营历史）。

结论

我不是投资顾问，也不是您的投资顾问。我是一名休闲扑克玩家，居住在芝加哥。我打算定期通过在Bally’s Chicago进行糟糕的决策来向芝加哥经济捐赠资金。

然而，我目前并不打算参与Bally’s的股票发行，也不打算购买他们的普通股。

出于过度的谨慎，我想指出我拥有少量MGM股票，而MGM是Bally’s的直接竞争对手。我在拉斯维加斯的一次会议上染上了扑克的爱好（该会议在Tropicana酒店举办，后来被Bally’s收购并以受控方式坍塌）。

MGM在街对面，实际上设有扑克桌。我在会议后多次愉快地前往他们的酒店住宿，并在某些年份（并非所有年份）在这些桌面上输钱。我购买股票的原因与我购买每一家我使用过的酒店、航空公司、银行等的股票相同：如果一个不太高风险的扑克玩家有例行的客户服务投诉，投资者关系部门可以作为升级策略，而酒店员工可能早已习惯于倾听那些在赌场输钱的人的抱怨。

哦，对了，我之前提到过这次发行中存在加密货币的元素。此次发行的注册和过户代理是BitGo Trust，见说明书第41页。如果我编造了这个细节，作为一名加密货币怀疑论者，您可能会认为我有点过于直白。

关于金钱的点滴年度回顾与计划

2025-01-16 04:37:22

新年快乐！我有一条家务消息（如果你是通过电子邮件阅读此内容，你将立即看到下面的内容），对2024年的回顾，以及关于《Bits about Money》作为出版物的一些更新。剧透：BAM不会消失；如果读者能以金钱支持它，我将不胜感激。

给支持者的提醒

你是在网页浏览器中阅读这篇文章吗？《Bits about Money》的支持者在收件箱中收到此内容时，已经看到了关于账单详情的简要提醒。如果你是BAM的付费支持者，并需要重新了解账单详情，请查看账户门户，这可能需要将一个魔法链接发送到你的电子邮件地址。如果你还有其他问题或疑虑，请给我发电子邮件。

2024年的《Bits about Money》

我们已经写了53篇《Bits about Money》文章。其中9篇是2024年新增的。这略低于我的目标，假设常规篇幅为2000到8000字。然而，一些2024年的文章是更深入的长篇分析，因此我对BAM在2024年的表现大致感到满意。我也对出版物的发展感到广泛满意。

去年最好的文章几乎肯定是《去银行化（以及辟谣？）》。我被告知它仍在权力走廊中流传。这篇文章探讨了Marc Andreessen等人声称加密货币因政府的有意行为而受到歧视的观点。我们深入分析了这些主张的程序历史、法律、商业行为者的激励因素以及政治影响。

这是罕见的、公开受到加密货币风险投资家称赞的文章，该风险投资家提出了“Choke Point 2.0”这一说法（“……从怀疑者那里能得到的关于这个问题的最佳和最公正的处理……”），同时也受到前联邦银行监管官的称赞（“这是一次力作。这绝对是优秀的。任何对这个问题感兴趣的人都应该阅读这篇文章。”）引用链接。

撰写这篇文章的经历某种程度上让我将BAM作为一个项目凝聚在一起。出版物通常有其特定领域和/或自我定位。BAM的目标是深入探讨金融与技术交汇处的细节。然而，博客、Substack等有时会被读者视为仅由作者声音和重复主题连接的独立文章。因此，当我解释例如为什么加密货币企业家和杂货店一样面临反洗钱相关的去银行化时，能够引用大量之前的相关分析、其他报道、联邦机构声明等，这让我感到很有启发。关于加密货币行业低估其对银行的信用风险的深入讨论，包括对Voyager Digital破产如何导致Metropolitan Commercial的加密货币业务下滑的详细案例，因之前关于美国存款账户实际上是信用产品的讨论而有所提升。

今年还发布了一些我几乎唯一有能力撰写的文章，例如关于Crowdstrike漏洞导致全国银行瘫痪的（快速！）事后分析（包括分析为什么监管指令和企业SaaS销售动因导致了安全软件的单一化）。我还撰写了一篇关于抵押担保、ACATS以及为什么你的经纪公司不太可能在另一家经纪公司要求时向你核实是否要转移所有资产的详细解释。摘要：你可能不需要担心这一点，但经纪公司当然需要。

总的来说，这是相当不错的一年！

2025年计划

我目前即将迎来离开全职工作两年的纪念日。（我仍然是Stripe的顾问，我的前雇主。Stripe并不一定支持我在个人空间中的写作。）

在过去的两年里，我将这段时间视为一种休假，经历了许多专注于工作的高强度年份，忽视了其他方面的关注。这让我有机会将家庭从日本迁往美国（主要是出于家庭原因），稍微追上父亲和游戏的节奏，并花些时间思考接下来的职业规划。我还没有一个高质量的答案，但一旦有了，我会让互联网知道。

教授有时会利用休假来写书。我也利用腾出的时间产生了公开的专业内容。BAM目前是最知名的。

我还开始了一个名为《Complex Systems》的播客，这很可能与你的兴趣相关。《Complex Systems》在主题上与BAM有大约40%的重叠。其余内容涉及与各领域专家的广泛讨论，关于各种形式的基础设施。你可以在你选择的播客客户端或上述网站上找到它。

《Complex Systems》自2024年7月起已发布26集，并（感谢我的勇敢助手Sammy以及相比写书更易言简意赅）实际上维持了一个可预测的发布计划：每周四（除去节假日）。

BAM的读者可能会喜欢我与Lars Doucet关于美国财产税的对话，与Ricki Heicklen关于在资本市场教授交易的讨论，或者（我的父亲）Jim McKenzie关于商业房地产开发的访谈。如果你更喜欢阅读而非听播客，你会很高兴地知道每集都有完整的文字稿（以及大量内嵌注释）。

公告：2025年某个时候，《Bits about Money》将发布配套的音频版本。我仍在尝试确定确切的格式，但一个实验性节目让我朗读了一篇经典的BAM文章（欺诈的最佳数量是非零的）并加入实质性的现场评论。一旦有专门的播客源供你订阅，我会通知你。这个音频产品将免费且公开，感谢BAM读者的慷慨支持。我目前计划音频节目会在BAM文章发布后一周左右推出。这个产品是根据会员的要求制作的，因为显然有些人希望在健身房或通勤时听关于金融基础设施的内容。我很乐意满足这一需求。

我目前计划在2025年发布大约12期BAM内容，大致如此，但我理解读者主要关注的是质量、品味和编辑，而不是字数。如果计划有变，我会通知大家。

未来的话题一如既往地由作者自行决定，并且深受读者建议的影响。Sammy和我（敲木头）正在接近一个深入的调查新闻项目的尾声，我非常期待与大家分享，关于银行欺诈。调查新闻与通常的解释、评论和深入分析有所不同，但你应该期待这些内容仍然是出版物的核心。

请考虑通过购买会员来支持这项工作

《Bits about Money》由其读者支持。再次感谢那些在我撰写53篇无付费墙的深入分析文章时帮助我支付房贷的读者。我特别致力于保持《Bits about Money》免费公开可访问，这在专业写作中是不常见的。你的支持让我能够做到这一点。这也是我持续投入时间和注意力撰写相关内容的持续努力。

有时有人会问我为什么没有付费墙。这当然不是收入最大化决定。（许多技术人员对此有非常不理智的珍视信念。）《Bits about Money》没有付费墙，因为我更注重其传播范围和影响力而非财务成功。这一直很重要，因为一些读者，如学生和监管者，可能无法负担订阅费用，或者（由于结构性/文化原因）难以证明支出一份行业期刊的合理性。大多数BAM的数百名支持者是科技和/或金融领域的专业人士；对你来说便宜的支持对许多人都是有用的，包括通过促进更好的公共政策或教育你公司的潜在员工。

公开可用性也有助于新兴的使用场景：当你向LLMs讨论这些话题时，这实际上效果不错。这不需要与实验室进行特殊谈判，因为他们的爬虫包括公共互联网，而未包括大多数关于金融的专业写作。当我年轻时，我会为此事实道歉，因为这意味着一个用户向LLM询问与加密货币相关的去银行化时，可能会得到我的信息，而不是例如《华尔街日报》的信息。截至今天，这条链中的薄弱环节是LLM，因为我的关于去银行化的写作明显优于《华尔街日报》的。

（《华尔街日报》在他们擅长的领域非常出色，这更偏向于新闻报道而非解释为什么世界运作方式的专家评论。我希望他们能达成一个附加协议，让LLMs在成长过程中阅读《华尔街日报》，就像我曾经做的那样。由于我无法与世界上每个实验室达成协议，将内容发布到开放互联网实现了相同的目标。）

如果你已经是付费支持《Bits about Money》的读者，感谢你的支持。如果你不是，请考虑购买会员。大多数支持者选择年度计划（目前每年165美元）。我们还有月度会员和更昂贵的选项，后者戏称为我给予他人的最有用的定价建议。

《Bits about Money》会员很可能是一项可抵税的支出，对商业而言。如果你在科技或金融领域工作，它也可能包含在你的教育预算中。你对其他问题的疑问大多可以在会员页面上找到答案。

感谢你提前考虑支持。一如既往，我会阅读发送给我的电子邮件，特别欢迎对选题的评论。

很快再见。

去银行化（以及揭穿？）

2024-12-10 06:31:44

Recently, noted VC Marc Andreessen kicked off a discussion about debanking, in a podcast with his co-founder Ben Horowitz (begins at 7:42) and in an appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast. The venture firm they founded, a16z, also published a brief on this topic.

The central thrust, quoting a16z’s brief (ellipsis in original): “Debanking can therefore be used as a tool or weapon systemically wielded by specific political actors / agencies against private individuals or industries without due process. Imagine if the government decided who could or couldn’t get electricity merely because of their politics, or some arbitrary reason… without having to explain, notify, or offer recourse. That’s what’s happening with debanking.”

If you are new here, you are presently reading a column which routinely covers compliance-oriented topics at the intersection of the financial system and technology companies. This topic is pretty central to my beat, and I have some relevant personal knowledge.

“It’s not a conspiracy theory if people really are out to get you.” sums up part of my reaction to this, but only part. There exists some amount of conflation between what private actors are doing, what state actors have de facto or de jure commanded that they do, and which particular state and political actors have their fingers on the keyboard. These create a complex system; the threads are not entirely divorced from each other.

A few disclaimers:

I previously worked for Stripe, and am currently an advisor there. Stripe is not a bank, but many regulated financial institutions have similar considerations. I’m not speaking for them. Stripe does not necessarily endorse things I say in my own spaces.

The recent debanking discourse focuses (and overfocuses; see below) on crypto. I am (somewhat notoriously) a crypto skeptic. Arguments aren’t soldiers; the truth is the truth. The truth sometimes favors crypto advocates in this discussion, and where it does, I will cite sources extensively. Where it doesn’t, I will mostly cite sources extensively.

The debanking discussion arises from an explicitly political project. Moreover, questions of public policy are frequently political in a democracy. The ballot box is the ultimate check on government abuse of power. While I have no project here, and try to be non-partisan in professional spaces, to ease the fears of crypto fans: I’m definitely not a secret Warrenite.

Closing bank accounts

“Debanking” describes a cluster of behaviors.

The most salient one is involuntarily closing a customer’s bank account, often a long-established one, optionally without presenting a reason. Because “debanking” is an advocacy term, that often gets conflated with declining to open an account for a person or a business.

These two things are very different in their impact on the person/firm and in our moral intuitions. It’s the difference between getting divorced and being turned down for a date.

Advocates often invoke a user-centric perspective of debanking, focusing on the impact on individuals/firms. Then, they conflate it with regulators’ decisions regarding bank supervision, in ways which are facially not about direct user impact. We will return to bank supervision later.

Industry doesn’t call it “debanking.” This is partly for the usual corporate euphemism reasons. This is partly because industry does not always share assumptions of how the world should work with advocates, and is concerned that “debanking” smuggles in those assumptions.

So when one discusses this with colleagues, one might use words like offboarding, derisking, closing the accounts of a customer, etc.

There is often an implication, and much rarer a reality, that the debanking decision is not one of a single financial institution. Sufficiently correlated “independent” decisions by financial institutions could deprive a firm or individual of access to banking services. We will explore some coordination mechanisms, which are overstated, and some correlation mechanisms, which are poorly understood.

We’re hearing about debanking because it sometimes affects socially established wealthy entrepreneurs and their companies. Some people it happened to are densely networked and also affiliated with talented communicators that have (in the parlance of our times) a platform. It is important to say from the jump that this is not the typical profile.

A huge majority of all people who find their accounts involuntarily closed will have been let go for credit risk or operational cost reasons. Overdraft your account repeatedly and look unlikely to be able to pay the fee for this service? Expect to lose that account, and probably all other accounts at that institution.

Do you know anyone with a parent advanced in years, who is dealing with challenges of aging, perhaps has gotten scammed a time or three, and might occasionally lash out at customer service employees? Debanking is more relevant to their interests than they might currently appreciate.

Decisions to debank an individual will often debank their controlled entities, and vice versa. Debanking will also not infrequently swiftly cascade to accounts in the same household, regardless of title (non-specialists can round this to “name on the account”; industry can’t). Banks institutionally consider those accounts in the same household to be highly likely to be under common control, regardless of what paperwork, account holders, or politically influential subcultures believe. This is an area in which the mores of the banking industry are much closer to the traditional middle class than to coastal elites.

Sometimes, though, one gets one’s accounts closed because one has activities which are outside a bank’s risk tolerance or contrary to their compliance posture. This was cited to me both times I was debanked.

Two debanking anecdotes explained

Once upon a time, I had a U.S. checking account. One day, the bank called me, and asked me why I was averaging two incoming ACH transfers a day. I told them that I ran a sole proprietorship selling software over the Internet. The ACH transfers were from from my two payment providers, which paid me out my sales (less fees) once per business day. The bank thanked me for my explanation and told me they thought the business sounded legitimate. Then they said I had 30 days to move the business’ funds flow to a different bank, or they would close all my accounts.

“Banksplain that offboarding?” Typical retail consumer checking accounts are, on the spectrum of the full menu of banking services, extremely low-risk, not a focus of bank examiner time, and institutionally preferred by both banks and regulators because of core financial access concerns. Accordingly, the amount and degree of monitoring a bank invests in the consumer checking line of business will be relatively low, in line with a risk analysis it performed. Its regulator has read that analysis and decision, and expressed no objection to it.

This particular bank did not, at the time, have a small business practice within its personal banking division. Very many banks do, but this particular bank did not. And thus this bank had not built out the higher degree of policies and procedures that would support small business banking. A surprising example of a small business that demands drastically more thought than you would think is discussed in detail below. The bank, on learning I had a sole proprietorship banked with them, considered that behavior innocent but not supportable, not because it didn't like my business but because it knew it had no built out infrastructure to support any business.

At the second institution, I once checked my U.S.-organized individual retirement account from a Japanese IP address. I had done that many times, but I did it one last time, too. This caused a short phone call, where the bank’s affiliate confirmed that I indeed lived in Japan, then informed me the account would be immediately restricted and then closed. I would need to make arrangements to request my shares be transferred to a new (U.S.) brokerage account, or authorize them to sell and mail me a check.

“Banksplain that offboarding?” This was likely downstream of a procedure implemented to ensure that the institution’s affiliated securities firm did not act outside the scope of its broker-dealer licenses, which (the institution was aware) did not include any with Japanese regulators.

When these events happened, it was very annoying. I did not contemporaneously understand why they were happening. They required me to take time away from life, my day job, and business to make more phone calls, learn more things about the financial industry, and ultimately open new accounts.

That is the typical end to a debanking story. “And then, I opened a new account.”

Immigrant communities keep lists of which banks most want their business. So does the community of people who run small software businesses online. And so, while immigrants and small software companies deal with substantially more banking friction than the typical American working for Google or a university does, they are both very bankable.

Consider crypto entrepreneurs who have received an offer of investment of several million dollars. One might be able to hold the ideas in one mind simultaneously that a) there is some diversity of life experiences in that group but b) on average though, they are very socially advantaged, when considered on most of the usual axes. Despite those substantial advantages, it has been persuasively alleged that their companies and the entrepreneurs themselves routinely suffer debanking.

I also understand this to be true, in large part downstream of one risk factor that they hit more than almost all legal businesses of comparable scale and sophistication. There have been times and places where this challenge made crypto firms almost unbankable to the extent banks knew what they were doing. And it directly drives decisions against crypto founders and employees.

Debanking specifically for AML risk

I’ve written extensively about KYC and AML and will not recap all of it here. Banks have a panoply of obligations under regulation. One of those is that they have to write AML policies, including policies which identify high-risk activities. Then they have to follow those policies. You can overpromise but you cannot underdeliver; after you’ve told a regulator you will do X, not doing X can result in fines and other punishments, even if the regulator did not tell you to do (specifically) X.

Before we reach crypto, consider AML risk and its consequences among money services businesses.

Running a money services business (MSB) is virtually universally called out as a high-risk activity by banks’ internal AML policies. Explaining why would require explaining the entire history and object of AML. Please just take as writ for the moment: all banks have a list, those lists rhyme with some variation, and MSBs are on all the lists.

Some banks have built out so-called enhanced due diligence (EDD) programs under which they will bank MSBs. Many banks have not; if a business banking at one identifies itself as an MSB, or if their ongoing monitoring of transactions suggests one is probably an MSB (for example, if there are ACH pulls from Western Union for tens of thousands of dollars, which will suggest to an analyst that the business is probably a Western Union agent), the bank intends that business to get a letter.

Whether they successfully execute on the letter, and the decision the letter announces, varies, but in terms of intent, they intend to consistently reach the decision given similar facts.

That letter will, in all likelihood, not be candid as to what is happening or why. It may not cite that the customer is an MSB. It may not cite why the bank believes that. It will not recount the bank’s internal AML policies which identify being an MSB as a high-risk activity, though it might say four or five templated words about risk. It will not explain the bank’s strategic decision to not invest in a compliant EDD program that would allow it to service MSBs.

No, the letter will say that the bank is closing the customer's accounts.

It may describe this as a "business decision", using those two words, of the bank. It will often say that this decision is final. The decision is probably not actually final. That is an opening negotiating position, like “We don’t negotiate salaries.” If you don’t argue the point, it has achieved its objective. The grain of truth within it is “We probabilistically think that talking with the typical recipient of this letter is negative expected value.”

Why doesn’t the bank want to talk with the typical recipient about it? Because the typical MSB is a bodega with a sideline in alternative financial services.

You might think that it is absurd that the government would concern itself with MSBs that are clearly the sideline of the local bodega. Without reaching the question of whether this priority is absurd, I invite you to peruse the Financial Crime Enforcement Network’s Enforcement Actions For Failure To Register As A Money Services Business. These are a small sample of real enforcement actions. That sample was chosen by FinCEN and I think reasonable people understand it was not chosen by FinCEN with a goal of embarrassing FinCEN or the entire AML regime that ensures FinCEN employees will have a job tomorrow.

I will take the liberty of fictionalizing names here, to give you the flavor of real people with real businesses that FinCEN both a) prosecuted and b) posted trophies of pour encourager les autres : Bob Smith d/b/a Bob’s Fast Gas. Taro’s Snack Shop, Inc. Cheap Phonez 4 U, Inc. Ben Goldberg d/b/a Kosher Foods.

FinCEN has posted the full text of each settlement, frequently including a restatement of their alleged violations. In many of those documents (not all of them!), if one credits FinCEN’s narrative as Gospel truth, one will believe: yeah, this is absolutely a bodega. The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network has jammed up the guy behind the counter because he failed to have a written AML/KYC policy and because when he traveled overseas the person he hired to mind the store was not trained in AML. Having won the case, they fined him $10,000. Given that, a fair-minded reader immediately assumes the bodega is probably not actually a front for the Colombian drug cartels, Hamas, or a foreign intelligence operation.

With this well-evidenced understanding of FinCEN’s… quixotic interest in the crime of selling money orders and also laundry detergent and delicious sandwiches, you can understand why a bank, attentive to FinCEN’s desires here, is doing something that strikes many people as insane. It has employed teams of people whose job is to make sure it sifts the rogue bodegas from the garden-variety bodegas before FinCEN asks “Why did you move money for a rogue bodega!? How many times do we have to tell you people! BE ON THE LOOKOUT FOR ROGUE BODEGAS.”

Running EDD processes and ongoing monitoring is expensive. Banking a bodega isn’t very lucrative. And thus most banks won’t bank a bodega that is also an MSB, despite them having no particular malice against bodegas or the people who run them. This won’t change if the bodega owner calls to them to protest that he is a legitimate businessman, that this debanking is un-American, or that he feels like they are discriminating against him for being an immigrant. That’s a conversation the bank has had a thousand times and never want to have again… with a bodega owner.

Some MSBs are fintechs. They have teams of people who are extremely aware of financial regulation. Those professionals intentionally chose a bank which was capable of banking at least some MSBs. They then had a laborious bespoke conversation about risk tolerance and mutually agreed-upon compliance procedures.

More than zero fintechs have been debanked over the years, but they probably don’t first learn about it from a paper letter. Their team of people who do bank things all day would have heard from the team of people that do fintech things all day, likely beginning many moons ago. And if they got the letter, they would understand generally why they got the letter, and not be so oblivious as to trust the literal text of the letter.

Class is an interconnected set of culture, scripted behaviors, and the advantages and disadvantages that attach to them. The culture that is the American professional-managerial class has a relationship with truth which occasionally confounds outsiders to it. An American PMC member, particularly one with a professional specialization in banking, understands an offboarding letter to be a ritual object rather than something meant to be taken literally.

Many regular people who get the offboarding letter are confused and upset. Most people who get this letter are insufficiently expert in the financial system to understand what is going on. Many of them are (perhaps sensibly) enraged that the bank seems reluctant to offer answers. If they successfully pry answers out of the bank, the answers sound like nonsense or change constantly.

Here, advocates often say that banks lack fundamental humanity, regard for their customers, or simple competence. I’d tell them that is neither here nor there, but the challenges described in Seeing like a Bank drive far more of this than malice, apathy, or incompetence as such. It is a systems issue.

But AML-driven offboarding has one particular spectral signature which is worse than normal debanking, which will always be a confusing, unpleasant experience for most customers.

Some of these customers are getting the letter because the bank looked into their account after a transaction was flagged as suspicious. This generally happens because an automated system twinged on it. Most of the so-called “alerts” are false positives, but banks are required to have and follow a procedure to triage them. That procedure is typically “Send a tweet-length summary of the alert to an analyst and have them eyeball things.” Every bank needs at least one person triaging alerts; the largest banks have thousands.

What if the analyst, on the basis of their training, experience, and data available from the alert system and from the account history they can access, decides that a transaction has… more than nothing irregular about it? Then they compose a specially formatted memo.

That memo is called a Suspicious Activity Report (SAR). The bank files it with FinCEN, via a computer talking to a computer after the analyst pushes some buttons. Then the analyst goes back to triaging incoming alerts.

Busting bodegas is a sideline for FinCEN; receiving SARs is their main job.

A SAR is not a conviction of a crime. It isn’t even an accusation of a crime. It is an interoffice memo documenting an irregularity, about 2-3 pages long. Banks file about 4 million per year. (There are some non-bank businesses also obliged to file them, but nobody is presently complaining about decasinoing, so ignore that detail. Banks are the central filers of SARs.) For flavor: about 10% are in the bucket Transaction With No Apparent Economic, Business, or Lawful Purpose. FinCEN has ~300 employees and so cannot possibly read any significant portion of these memos. They mostly just maintain the system which puts them in a database which is searchable by many law enforcement agencies. The overwhelming majority are write-once read-never.

Banks are extremely aware that most SARs are low signal, and that a good customer might wander into getting one filed on them. But there are thresholds and risk tolerance levels. And SARs will sometimes, fairly mechanically, cause banks to decide that they probably don’t want to be holding a hot potato. It’s risky, plausibly, and expensive, certainly. At many institutions, for retail accounts, the institution will have serious questions about whether it wants to continue working with you on the second SAR. It will probably not spend that much time thinking deeply about the answer.

So can the bank simply explain to the customer that staff time preparing SARs is expensive and that routinely banking customers who turn out to be real money launderers is a great way to end up with billion dollar fines? No, they cannot.

The typical individual named in a SAR is low-sophistication and cannot meaningfully participate in a discussion with a Compliance officer, because they’re very probably at the social margins. Do you have a favorite axis of disadvantage? Immigrant, no financial background, limited English ability, small business owner, socioeconomic class, etc? The axis has non-zero relevance to one’s probability of getting a SAR filed on oneself due to innocent behavior. Very many people who have SARs filed on them are disadvantaged on several axes simultaneously.

No, the bank cannot explain why SARs triggered a debanking, because disclosing the existence of a SAR is illegal. 12 CFR 21.11(k) Yes, it is the law in the United States that a private non-court, in possession of a memo written by a non-intelligence analyst, cannot describe the nature of the non-accusation the memo makes. Nor can it confirm or deny the existence of the memo. This is not a James Bond film. This is not a farce about the security state. This is not a right-wing conspiracy. This is very much the law.

If you work at a regulated financial institution, in the U.S. or any allied country, you will be read into SAR (and broader AML) confidentiality within days of joining. You will be instructed to comply with it, very diligently. If you do not, your employer may suffer consequences. You personally are subject to private sanction by your employer (up to and including termination) and also the potential for criminal prosecution. If your trainer speaks with a British accent, they will phrase the offense as “tipping off.”

It’s not just illegal to disclose a SAR to the customer. It is extremely discouraged, by Compliance, to allow there to be an information flow within the bank itself that would allow most employees who interact directly with customers, like call center reps or their branch banker, to learn the existence of SAR. This is out of the concern that they would provide a customer with a responsive answer to the question “Why are you closing my account?!” And so this is one case where in Seeing like a Bank the institution intentionally blinds itself. Very soon after making the decision to close your account the bank does not know specifically why it chose to close your account.

This strikes many people as Kafkaesque. (Me, too!) It is the long-standing practice of banking in the U.S. and allied countries. It is downstream of laws passed by duly elected representatives. It was not capriciously developed as a political tool in the last few years. (We’ll get to those.)

Crypto-investing VCs are not low-sophistication operators of the corner bodega. They are extremely aware that crypto is on the high-risk list at many institutions. They would prefer this were not so.

Their preferences regarding the high-risk list at, say, portfolio fintech companies are sophisticated and nuanced. For example, they will (accurately!) say that the high-risk list authored by a company socially close to them did not arise in a vacuum. Certain entries were foisted upon them by financial partners. Their financial partners will, over drinks at the bar, very quietly, say that they can relate to occasionally feeling powerless. And, though many will find this dumbfounding, their regulators will frequently say the same thing.

Occasionally. About some entries. We shall return to the mechanisms.

Debankings of founders as opposed to firms

Plausibly some crypto founders are low-sophistication about the finance industry in their early days as founders. This is not a judgement about one's character. Nobody is born knowing everything, and very few people will have a serious and informed encounter with this topic ever, not in school, not at work, not in being a generally well-read individual, unless and until it is professionally relevant to them.

Perhaps a founder might ask a friend: “I run a legitimate business which happens to be in crypto and suddenly found my personal accounts closed. Why did this happen? I did nothing wrong.”

Playing the odds? The bank thinks there is an unacceptable risk that you will use your personal accounts to launder money on behalf of the business (and/or its customers, etc). The bank has insufficient controls to give them an appropriate level of certainty as to whether you’re doing this or not. They are disinclined to find out the hard way, so they invite you to find another bank.

Why do they think you might launder on behalf of the business? In part because of the extensive history of crypto companies laundering funds through the accounts of their founders and employees, specifically, and the banking industry’s highly-evidenced belief that businesses and their owners routinely commingle funds, generally.

Tether maintained access to the banking system by, among other mechanisms, having their executives establish accounts in their own names, stashing funds in the name of a lawyer, and using their non-executive employees as money mules. SBF had many talents but one of the main ones was money laundering. A major mechanism for that was loaning money (mostly customer assets and mostly sham loans) to employees then representing to banks (and others) that the employee was making an independent transaction not affiliated with FTX/Alameda/etc.

One would have to be very new or very incurious to be interested in crypto companies and be unaware of this history. Banks were rarely incorporated yesterday, and certain varieties of incuriosity-with-benefits are extremely frowned upon.

Presumption of innocence by commercial providers

But there is something to the critique, by advocates, that rampant lawlessness within crypto for a decade and a half shouldn’t cause an institution to stereotype an innocent crypto founder. Advocates want debanking to only follow an investigation uncovering a) strong evidence there exists b) a particular articulable risk which c) society actually cares about.

Part of it is philosophical: they believe they are entitled to something like individualized attention and a presumption of innocence. This assumption is deeply embedded in our legal system.

We do not have this assumption embedded in our banking system.

It would be laughable for credit accounts: “I have never defaulted on a loan from you, and therefore, you must give me the benefit of the doubt, and issue this loan.” No intellectually serious person expects that from banks. No, we construct probabilistic models about who is likely to repay based on observable factors, less some factors which society has disallowed us from using under the law. If we deem you insufficiently likely to repay the loan, even if you are still very likely to repay the loan, you don’t get the loan. Finance is not high school; 92% is not an A- anymore. We don’t have to wait for you to default, or have any individualized suspicion about you, or conduct a years-long fact-finding process.

One is prohibited in discrimination in lending on basis of, for example, race. Why? The American people feel quite strongly that they want this to be true, and so their representatives passed a series of laws. Those laws are well-established and uncontroversial. You also, as young data scientists quickly learn, can’t use customer zip codes, no matter how probative they are. This is because they have a very high risk of being an effective proxy for race. (Aside: this is why California used zip codes when it wanted to prioritize the delivery of lifesaving healthcare to patients of favored races, primarily for political reasons.)

One is not prohibited from using someone’s occupation or ownership of a business as underwriting criteria. Those happen to be incredibly probative and, not incidentally, separate rules literally require that we ask. (AML rules require a bank opening an account with ongoing transaction capability to ask for what your source of funds will be, which will often include wages and/or business income, and banks then generally need to know “... OK, wages for what?”)

Is there a built-out appeals process or higher authority with respect to being declined banking services? Don’t our moral intuitions require there to be one?

Many people with “capitalist” in their job title will tell you that there is, indeed, a higher authority to complain to if a capital allocator rejects your pitch. It is Mr. Market. That capital allocator has competitors. Go pitch them. Are there projects that no capital allocator will fund? Absolutely. That’s an important part of why we pay allocators: they assist us in not frittering away resources society expects to fund e.g. teachers' retirements on non-productive uses.

And so allocators will tell you: If you can’t find any allocator who will back you, despite your belief you have a good business plan, and your business plan requires capital to execute, you do not have a good business plan, and you should do something else with your life.

I have yet to meet a venture capitalist who believes that passing on a pitch should be subject to review by a higher authority than their partnership. Many do not, as routine practice, tell entrepreneurs why they passed. Pure downside. Passing is not an invitation for the founder to work their persuasive magic on you. The meeting was the opportunity for that; the meeting is over.

But banks are, certainly, not venture capitalists. There is an aspect to banks which is not exactly dissimilar in character to infrastructure providers. Utilities are frequently invoked as an example here. Why would we construct a society in which power companies needed to make underwriting decisions in supplying power?! (I think people surprised there may be surprised to do deep dives into e.g. negotiating power purchase agreements.)

Banks, in addition to providing infrastructure, are also neck deep in capital allocation. Some bits of the bank might be more like one's conception of a power company, and some bits of the bank might be more like one's conception of a venture capitalist. And some bits might be confusing hybrids of two intuitions.

It may surprise you that a simple vanilla deposit account is both infrastructure and also a capital allocation decision.

For one thing, typical deposit accounts in the U.S. are actually credit products. It's baked in and can't be baked out without making them unfit for purpose.

For another:

Banking reputable, legal crypto businesses is a risky endeavor

Sources of credit risk to the bank are substantially broader than simple non-repayment of funds borrowed. A financial institution can take a credit loss on banking a business without having what most non-specialists would consider a credit relationship. This is particularly true when banking financial service providers.

Here’s a worked example:

Suppose a crypto exchange blows up out of nowhere, in an absolutely freak accident that happens in about 20% of all exchange-years. The last financial institution banking them can end up holding the bag.

Voyager Digital was a regulated institution that was publicly traded. It had adults at the helm, a Compliance department, some level of written risk processes, and legitimate backers, including well-known venture capitalists.

Voyager blew up, because none of the above are sufficient to prevent you from blowing up.

When they blew up, their bank (Metropolitan Commercial) received a slew of ACH reversals. Customers (often quite reasonably!) felt that they had sent in money to buy crypto, but they hadn’t received their crypto, which feels quite a bit like fraud, and so they complained to their (the customer’s) bank.

Metropolitan characterizes that complaint as fraudulent behavior. There are certainly fraudulent accusations of fraud made to abuse cryptocurrency exchanges, by paying for crypto, claiming you didn’t get the crypto, and then getting your money back while you keep the crypto. However, the customers Metropolitan wanted permission to stiff perceive themselves as having no money and also no crypto. The customers had traded money for a claim against a bankruptcy estate.

Crypto is a product with widespread adoption across the socioeconomic spectrum, I am told. Do you think a random person off the street would, on being asked "Define a claim against a bankruptcy estate?", have a really confident, automatic answer to that question? I think they would probably have a more confident answer to the question "Have you ever tried to buy a claim against a bankruptcy estate?"

So what happens if one calls one's bank and says “I opened an app on my phone. I tried to buy something. I didn’t get it. Those bastards kept my money.” Very frequently, your bank’s customer service rep will type some brief notes into a web application then hit a button. The customer service rep is trained to sound helpful when this happens. Their skill with that... varies. They make, oh, $15 an hour and are not trained like a district court judge. They will conduct no real investigation nor careful balancing of facts and circumstances. They are likely entirely unaware of notorious bankruptcies in the crypto industry, which are an infintessimally small portion of all complaints that reach their telephone queue. Customer didn’t get something from an Internet merchant? Push the button, read the script to the customer, disconnect, immediately serve next caller.

That button will, some steps later, mechanically cause Metropolitan to transfer back some money to Voyager’s now aggrieved customer, which (importantly) Voyager did not actually have to distribute, because it was in bankruptcy. Whose balance sheet did it come off of, then? Metropolitan’s. Their shareholders had just performed the sacred duty of equity: taking the credit loss so that depositors didn’t have to.

If you are banking a quickly growing financial services firm which has large daily funds flows, and charging small per-transaction fees and/or earning net interest on deposits, the total amount of money at risk (within the chargeback or reversal window) as of time T can be vastly larger than the total revenue charged for services at all times 0 through T inclusive. A handwavy approximation for it: number of days in the relevant chargeback/dispute window times average daily transaction volume times dispute percentage. (This will be in the low to high tens of percent. It depends on many factors, including the sophistication of your customer base, whether well-informed guides to consumer rights in banking go viral within it, and similar.)

And thus banks are very selective with respect to what financial services firms they bank. Because one blowing up, just one, can sink the entire related business line.

Voyager and Metropolitan ended up asking the court to change the rules of the ACH protocol in their favor. Then banking technologists told the court that the ACH protocol was computer code maintained in a decentralized fashion and thus beyond the purview of any court. Wait, no, that sentence is from my unpublished cyberpunk novel and somehow made it into this essay by accident; please disregard. No serious person would say courts cannot interact with software or the people who write it. The court ordered a protocol upgrade. The court’s order was swiftly carried out, like many court orders, by responsible professionals employed by several firms.

Metropolitan, of course, got sued over the whole Voyager fracas. A major aspect of the lawsuit: Voyager intimated to customers that they would be covered by FDIC insurance and so their funds on deposit were safe. Voyager’s CEO has alleged that Metropolitan’s management suggested this selling point. Voyager’s marketing department published objectively false statements regarding FDIC coverage. “[FDIC coverage] means that in the rare event your USD funds are compromised due to the company or our banking partner’s failure, you are guaranteed a full reimbursement (up to $250,000).”

Marketing departments frequently misunderstand fine distinctions here, which is why, at well-operated financial technology firms, Legal does not let marketing write one single word about FDIC insurance without their sign-off. The fateful two words above are “the company”: FDIC insurance does not and has never backstopped the obligations of non-insured clients of the banking system. It only backstops the obligations of insured financial institutions. (Had Metropolitan failed, Voyager’s customers may have had recourse to FDIC insurance, but Metropolitan did not fail.)

And so the FDIC has not paid Voyager’s customers one thin dime, nor will it ever. It has neither obligation nor legal authority to do so.

The FDIC is institutionally very opposed to fraudulently inducing customers to transact via claiming FDIC coverage. The FDIC is a banking regulator, among other things, and we’ll discuss them more in a moment. But they are, first and foremost, in charge of the deposit insurance fund. Crypto’s history of falsely promising that the FDIC will make customers whole for its own failures is one reason why the FDIC is institutionally wary of crypto.

Metropolitan then ceased crypto banking. Several banks which had major or incipient crypto practices ceased crypto banking roughly contemporaneously.

Was Metropolitan within its rights to do so? Ab-so-lutely.

Was it within its power to not exit crypto banking? Some thumbs were placed on the scale, and Metropolitan acknowledges this, though they probably were not dispositive for Metropolitan specifically. Their incipient crypto business blew up in their face. Heads would likely have rolled in any event.

Metropolitan characterized their decision as influenced by commercial and regulatory concerns, but long coming. Quote:

Today’s announcement of our exit from the crypto-currency related asset vertical represents the culmination of a process that began [six years earlier] in 2017, when we decided to pivot away from crypto and not grow the business.

Suppose you are an internal advocate for crypto at a mid-sized bank in the U.S. When you bring your proposals to management, one of the things that will cause a chilly reception is the regulatory environment, certainly. Another one is that management can read the newspaper. Other banks which got this pitch and greenlit it took huge losses, ate months of negative headlines, and will be under examiner’s microscopes for at least the next year. This happened over almost no revenue. Why should management say “Yes, as long as it is only the high-quality crypto companies, as long as you cross your Is and dot your Ts, this seems like a low-risk business to be in? Yeet me some Shiba, bro.”

Anyhow, when a crypto founder couldn’t find a bank in 2011, one could be excused for blaming reflexive banker conservatism and low levels of technical understanding. Crypto has had a decade and a half to develop a track record to be judged on. Crypto is being judged on that track record.

Some advocates consider this unfair. Sure, sure, there was some… cowboy behavior in the early days, but that’s just the price of innovation. The freaks and geeks are always on the cutting edge of technology, and well, you know, I suppose they might not always listen to lawyers. But the early days are basically over. We bring something completely new to the table. We are responsible professionals with a compliance-first mindset. We are thoroughly committed to working with partners in finance and government to assuage all concerns. We have impeccable pedigrees. We say all the right things, in all the right accents. We are capable of hiring lobbyists, making campaign contributions, and engaging in a considered media strategy, too!

Some chill felt is caused by the long shadow of SBF

Much has been written about Sam Bankman-Fried and his co-conspirators and enablers. That story remains extensively misunderstood and undercovered relative to its importance.

SBF et al orchestrated a sequential privilege escalation attack on the system that is the United States of America, via consummate skill at understanding how power works, really works, in the United States. They rooted trusted institutions and used each additional domino’s weight against the next. A full recounting of the political strategy alone could easily fill a book. The forfeiture allegations fill 26 printed pages at 1-2 lines per targeted politician. The United States has also alleged that he tried to buy the Bahamas.

SBF and most of the co-conspirators were focused on the Democratic side of the aisle. His cutout Ryan Salame was the bagman for the Republican side of the aisle. Salame’s own lawyers, in their sentencing memo (pg 11), in what is a unique legal strategy, disclaimed any good intent: “Whatever the topic, Ryan’s ultimate purpose for [meetings with government officials including including Senator Mitch McConnell and then-Congressman Kevin McCarthy, focused on pandemic preparedness] was eventually to influence cryptocurrency policy.”

SBF was not charged for the bribing officials part of the crime tapestry, putatively due to treaty commitments to the Bahamas. C.f. the extradition treaty, Article 3. (I absolutely believe that that was a complication and disbelieve it was a hard constraint.) It was an element of plea deals by several co-conspirators, most of whom got lesser sentences for cooperating with the government. Salame was uncooperative and sentenced to 90 months. SBF’s parents appear unlikely to be charged. This is despite them being active and knowing participants in crime, including providing their son with extensive advice, in writing, on topics germane to their professional expertise. For example, his mother, a Stanford law professor and Democratic bundler, advised him to use his coworkers as straw donors to avoid compromising optics via mandatory disclosure laws. IANAStanfordLawProfessor, but that is plainly illegal.

SBF was considered, for a time, the heir apparent to George Soros. He was the next generation’s well-monied Democratic standard bearer in Washington. One major reason why crypto has experienced what feels like performative outrage from Democrats since 2022 is that they are trying to demonstrate that crypto did not successfully buy them.

Many in Washington, like many in crypto, have… selective memories of what meetings they took, transactions they entered, calls they made, and cookies they noshed on in 2020 and 2021.

But to remove the beam in my own eye before casting out the mote in another’s: SBF struck me as whip-smart, extremely cynical, but sincere with respect to his motivations. I thought him likely one of the most competent operators in crypto. (Don’t assume that I meant that as high praise, please.) Also I understood him contemporaneously to be Tether’s bagman and told people, privately, “Don’t get too close; 5% chance he goes to prison.”

In hindsight, I overrated the competence in several important domains, and totally missed the massive fraud. This was in no small part because of a strong sense of fellow-feeling. We have blind spots the size of Jupiter for people who remind us of ourselves and our closest friends. It’s hardwired into humanity, I think.

Anyhow, Tether’s current most important bagman is Howard Lutnik, who may be stepping back from the position, as he’s currently leading Trump’s transition team and has his eyes on bigger prizes. Forget MicroStrategy’s high implied volatility. Lutnik convertible arb would be the trade of the century.

Some crypto advocates believe it’s unfair to tar the industry with the SBF brush, for either industry internal reasons (“He was CeFi not true DeFi, and tried to force the rest of us along with it! Nuts to him!”) or political reasons (“Not my side of the aisle! Salami, you said? Never heard of him neither!”)

Here we are again at the tension between a) democracies should practice careful consideration of individuals on their merits and reject collective punishment but b) the political system shouldn’t have the memory span of a squirrel.

Operation Choke Point

Once upon a time there was an impressively unprincipled set of decisions made. Like many such tales, it didn’t happen as one discrete event in a smoky backroom. It started small and then cascaded, was covered up, and then came to light. Then, it was roundly and justly castigated.

There are certain incredibly non-salubrious businesses that make routine, intense use of banking rails and which simultaneously generate many customer complaints. Debt collectors are one such business.

Full disclosure: I was an unpaid advocate for consumers with issues with debt collectors (and banks, FWIW) for many years, and have described debt collectors as “among the most odious hives of scum and villainy as exist in the United States.” I’m also grouping a few clusters of consumer credit bottom feeders under “debt collector” or we’d be here all day: payday lenders, so-called “credit repair” companies, and debt-adjacent telemarketing.

Banking regulators, in response to customer complaints (which savvy customers, such as customers who listen to advocates like yours truly, will sometimes route through regulators because that achieves better outcomes than routing through CS), warned banks that debt collectors appeared to be at grossly disproportionate risk of ACH transfers that customers claimed were unauthorized. Customers claiming this are not always being candid. However, debt collectors do routinely abuse one’s common intuitions about how banking rails work as an intentional strategy. See the above piece for elaboration at length.

Now, banks who bank debt collectors can math out how many of their ACH payments are complained about. One can make an argument that those banks might not have institutional knowledge that complaints about debt collectors are structurally anomalously high, for Seeing like a Bank reasons. One could further argue that a regulator can licitly tell a bank something they don’t know. That sounds reasonable and an appropriate use of a public servant’s time.

Those banks that would open accounts for debt collectors (n.b. not all banks!) are OK with having that business. Debt collection, while not salubrious, is legal and regulated in the United States. Banks are not one-stop monitoring shops for all of their customers’ various obligations under the law.

But working through legislatures and courts is slow and expensive. Why not simply deputize the banks? We already have them run private intelligence agencies! How much of a reach is it for them to also run private consumer protection bureaus?

The Obama administration didn’t like debt collectors, for very similar reasons to why I don’t like debt collectors. And so they broadened the critique: the risk in banking bad guys was broader than the (known, accepted, controlled, and certainly not existential) risk of ACH reversals. Those customer complaints, those complaints could harm the bank’s standing in the community. That could result in e.g. a withdrawal of customer deposits. This would imperil the bank, for the usual reason. And if something could imperil banks, why, that should naturally cause the FDIC to make its opinions known.

Get out of peril, by kicking debt collectors to the curb.

But the FDIC had to be persuaded into that point of view, by a cadre of very talented people.

The Department of Justice had a legal theory, which it was quite proud of. The Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery, and Enforcement Act of 1989 (FIRREA) gives the DOJ a hunting license for any fraud (and many other crimes) which affects a federally insured financial institution. FIRREA was passed after the savings and loan crisis, to protect small financial institutions from peril and thereby avoid another crisis.

Now your common sense understanding might be “Oh, Congress probably intended on cracking down on fraud targeting banks which, I don’t know, was big enough to imperil a small community institution? I could see a really large fraudulent bank loan imperiling a small bank. And checking the history books, there were some wildly fraudulent bank loans mixed up in the S&L crisis. OK, so we federalized prosecution of defrauding a bank like that? Sounds reasonable.”

If you have that intuition, you are apparently not creative enough to have worked as a lawyer in the Obama admin DOJ. No, their thought was that if you provide rails which facilitate fraud, such as giving a fraudster a bank account, you are affecting a financial institution: yourself. And so, the DOJ can go after you, for self-harm. Note that you do not need to lose money, oh no, the DOJ can also go after you because the way you affected yourself was to cause your regulator to like you less. When you settle with the DOJ, it will extract an enforceable promise in writing that you will stop your campaign of self-harm, and also stop banking specifically enumerated industries, like payday loans.

I realize that this sounds unlikely. The following is a direct quote (expanding acronyms) from the DOJ Office of Professional Responsibility, in the report (pg 16) where they exonerated DOJ lawyers.

As more fully explained below, the [Consumer Protection Branch] has relied on the “self-affecting” theory, as well as additional theories of liability, in three cases arising from the Operation Choke Point initiative.

Now when the DOJ or FDIC tells you, a bank, to do something, or strongly suggests that you do something, that usually isn’t the end of the argument. You can certainly haggle. You can even fight… to a degree.

This is a multi-year iterated game with repeat players, each of whom has limited resources and very complicated preferences. Both sides are constantly picking their battles. There is give and take. When your counterparty is happy with you, your emails get returned faster, you get more of your asks, and you can report smooth sailing to your boss. Both banks and regulators are ultimately made up of people, with emotions, career paths, and annual performance reviews.

Banks do not actually make a lot of money from servicing debt collectors. The culture that is banking looks at the culture that is debt collection and sees slimy people who are beneath it. And so the banks frequently obliged. Many of them, in their offboarding letters to debt collectors, were unusually candid relative to the standards of offboarding letters: it’s not you, and we apologize for this, but we’ve received regulatory guidance about your industry, and as a result our appetite to serve your industry no longer exists.

As it turns out, the Obama administration had many diverse policy preferences.

It wasn’t particularly in favor of guns, for example.

Gun sellers don’t use banks in the way that debt collectors use banks. They do not routinely trick customers into the gun-for-money transaction. They don’t make particularly intense use of ACH pulls (confidence: 99%, on general industry knowledge) and don’t have particularly high dispute rates (confidence: 95%, same).

But regulators, having discovered that “reputational risk” attached to anyone you didn’t like with nary a whisper of complaint, believed that banking gun sellers was high-risk. Haven’t you read the newspapers? School shootings. Do you want any of that sticking to you? You are imperiling your good name, and therefore the stability of your deposit base, and therefore your bank, and therefore the insurance fund, by accepting the business of gun sellers.

In Congressional testimony, the FDIC said that it hadn’t ordered anyone to debank disfavored businesses.

What we have done is we have tried to be very clear in putting out our guidance to say very publicly and clearly that as long as banks have appropriate risk mitigation measures in place, we are not going to prohibit or discourage them from doing business with anyone with whom they want to do business.

This individual might perceive themselves as telling the truth here. “Justify to me why the payday lenders are not on your high-risk list.” and then “Do you have a built-out EDD program for the deposit risk caused by payday lenders?” followed by “Then are you sure you should accept that business?” are consistent with this statement, individually and as a script. (Those are not quotes, but rather indicative summaries of stages in a conversation. I believe them to fairly characterize conversations that the record abundantly shows happened.)

The FDIC Office of the Inspector General, in an investigatory report, attempted to shift all blame for Operation Choke Point to the DOJ.

We found no evidence that the FDIC used the high-risk list to target financial institutions. However, references to specific merchant types in the summer 2011 edition of the FDIC’s Supervisory Insights Journal and in supervisory guidance created a perception among some bank executives that we spoke with that the FDIC discouraged institutions from conducting business with those merchants. This perception was most prevalent with respect to payday lenders.

When a regulator publishes position papers that it wants you to do something, and reiterates this in individualized supervisory guidance, that tends to create a perception in this author that the communicated policy direction was not YOLOed onto the Internet by a room full of monkeys banging keyboards randomly.

As frequently happens, the individual officials who had instructed banks to debank the targeted industries ignored Stringer Bell’s dictum on taking notes on a criminal conspiracy. Emails sent within the FDIC and DOJ were routinely archived, and banks (of course) keep copies of correspondence from their regulators. Those emails said what they said, and what they said was pretty damning.

For example, the Department of Justice’s internal Six Month Status Report On Operation Choke Point (excerpted in Congressional reporting) said:

Finding substantial questions concerning the legality of the Internet payday lending business models and the loans underlying debits to consumers’ bank accounts, many banks have decided to stop processing transactions in support of Internet payday lenders. We consider this to be a significant accomplishment and positive change for consumers . . . Although we recognize the possibility that banks may have therefore decided to stop doing business with legitimate lenders, we do not believe that such decisions should alter our investigative plans.

Not once, not twice, not a handful of times, not a loose confederation of rogue examiners. Three of six regional directors of the FDIC offices told the OIG that they understood Washington to want payday lending discouraged and two of them said there was an expectation to, in the words of the OIG, direct institutions that facilitated payday lending to “pursue an exit strategy.”

Did that require top-down direction? You can, in fact, generate nationwide programs with local offices doing strikingly similar things without top-down direction. The combination of a monoculture plus a policy direction that lower-level staffers believe in is often sufficient to make it happen. We have extensive experience of this in tech and finance, as discussed later.

Japanese has a beautiful word, sontaku, for the attitude and actions a diligent subordinate would take without his superior’s explicit instruction, believing them to anticipate his boss’ desires. Sontaku is a core skill in the American professional class. People possessing it are sometimes described as “motivated self-starters”, “high-agency”, “bold”, ”takes initiative”, ”acts like an owner”, etc. You are a very, very bad Compliance professional if you aren’t constantly sontaku-ing your regulator. You are also a bad Regional Director of the FDIC if you aren’t constantly sontaku-ing Washington.

But Operation Choke Point, specifically, simply was official policy. If it wasn't, no entity as complicated as the United States can ever be described as having even once had an official policy.

As the former Chairman of the FDIC wrote in a WSJ editorial:

Internal Justice Department papers released by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee make it clear that Justice prefers coercing banks to drop customers through Operation Choke Point rather than prosecuting illegal or fraudulent businesses directly because it’s easier, faster and requires fewer resources.

Operation Choke Point wasn’t just targeting debt collectors, gun sellers, and payday lenders. No, the FDIC’s bullet-pointed list was 30 entries long. They range from clearly abusive and illegal (scams) to “One could construct a narrative by which banking that industry is challenging” (pornography) to “a grab bag of things we dislike” (racism and… fireworks? Really?)

Operation Choke Point, once it came to light, caused a media and Congressional furor, because it was arbitrary and lawless. (I am using that in the ordinary sense of an American who took civics, not in the specialized sense of a DOJ lawyer, who might bristle for being called “lawless” when they had three court cases and one 25 year old statute which are clearly explained in the memo as adding up to them being able to do everything they did.)

The architects of Operation Choke Point steadfastly denied it was designed to do what it was manifestly designed to do. They denied it did what it manifestly did.

The agencies were then pointedly accused of lack of candor with Congress. If you tell a Congressman he isn’t reading the WSJ right, but internally your bosses are high-fiving themselves over that WSJ article, and they are high-fiving themselves because finally the WSJ is covering their important work accurately, Congress will not be pleased. Then they will show you a copy of your bosses’ emails, which they can subpoena, because they are Congress. (House Oversight Committee report, ibid, pg 10)

Some scholarly literature is sympathetic to the regulators’ point of view. (More is not.)

If you want a steelman, that’s the best one you’ll likely find. It acknowledges the DOJ’s efforts to interdict fraud by creatively interpreting FIRREA and targeting third-party payment processors and banks, accuses the financial industry of making a fuss over this for self-interested commercial reasons, performs a modified limited hangout of the high-risk list, and claims that the gun industry cynically glommed onto the news cycle for political reasons despite no actual enforcement specifically addressed against it.

My point of view? I can read emails. They say what they say, even when acknowledging what they say would cost a public servant their job. I read the postmortems (including many years ago; this sort of thing was my hobby before it was my job). I view them as face-saving exercises written, in no small part, by civil servants mortified that their peers could lose jobs and pensions simply for implementing the Administration’s policy preferences using colorable authority.

Sometimes, people have been known to lie in politics. Sometimes justice is not done. I know, try to weather the shock you must feel.

Operation Choke Point was mostly forgotten, except by banking nerds.

Until…

So-called Choke Point 2.0

Nic Carter, a crypto VC and podcaster, who occasionally does very good work, has been steadfastly attempting to brand a constellation of regulatory activities regarding crypto as Choke Point 2.0. This branding is an attempt to delegitimize them by associating them with politically-motivated lawlessness. It has since become popular among crypto advocates.

Unlike Operation Choke Point, which actually was a centrally directed operation with written project plans, status meetings, ongoing progress reports, and a code name decided by the participants (who, in hindsight, should have talked to their own Comms department and picked something that didn’t sound nefarious to describe their plans), Choke Point 2.0 stretches like taffy to attach to any recent regulatory activity crypto advocates don’t like. So we’ll have to review quite an involved history of very disparate issues to give advocates a fair hearing.

Carters' work, which is extensive on this topic, exists in pieces like Did the government start a global financial crisis to destroy crypto?

To answer the question in the title: no, it did not. We started a financial crisis which to-date is mercifully narrow as an underappreciated side effect of interest rate hikes to tame inflation.

Silvergate: Crypto had a bank, doesn’t now, and misses the good days

Crypto advocates have specific and general concerns about banking supervision at a small number of banks acutely relevant to their interests. They have tied these concerns to the debanking narrative.

They do not evince attention to detail or familiarity with the procedural history of specific examples they invoke, though some have attempted some original reporting with respect to these issues. That is to their credit.

As we’ve established, almost all banks consider crypto businesses to be high-risk, and avoid them. There was a small cadre of banks which had active crypto practices. Those banks purported, to the public and their regulators, to have the EDD required to bank them compliantly. This was incredibly operationally useful for crypto, for one very obvious reason (substantially every business needs a bank account) and one less obvious one.

Crypto talks a great game about decentralization, but centralized systems are more efficient than decentralized systems. When riding banking rails, making transfers outside of regular banking hours (which have five twos of uptime) is difficult. This exposes firms to risk and acts as a constant cost of capital.

Crypto trades 24/7. Crypto firms would like to settle crypto trades, particularly between stablecoins and the USD backing them, 24/7. Crypto’s solution to this was to all bank at the same bank, Silvergate, which I described (with some surprise, when they IPOed) as the First National Bank of Crypto.

Silvergate had a particular product called the Silvergate Exchange Network (SEN). SEN was both a) boring infrastructural plumbing and b) extremely important to the crypto industry. Oh boy, do crypto companies miss SEN. In sum, SEN would allow substantially 24/7 book transfers between Silvergate customers to shift USD balances between their bank accounts. This would let them constantly settle the USD leg of crypto trades between each other.

This was particularly important for stablecoin issuers, like Circle, which issues USDC. Circle’s main custodial bank for USDC was SVB. Circle wanted to be able to issue marketmakers like DRW and Alameda Research hundreds of millions of USDC 24/7 at any hour on any day with no more than a few minutes of latency, or redeem USDC for greenbacks in a similar fashion.

Now, a thing you will frequently see in fintech banking, and which is not itself at all inappropriate, is a fintech having multiple banks with a division of labor. One of those banks might agree to have a fintech’s customer-facing high-velocity low-EOD-balance transactional activity. And one of those banks might agree to have a fintech’s low-velocity high-EOD-balance deposits. These are very different business propositions for the banks! They imply different risks, different core competencies, and different revenue opportunities.

If you are running businesses which both a) have high daily inflows and outflows and also b) want to keep billions of dollars in the regulated banking perimeter, you very much need partners comfortable with both halves.

The argument you make, as a fintech, to the bank with your deposit business is that the other bank is also a competent, U.S.-regulated financial institution, with good AML and KYC controls (among others). Therefore, when your business makes one wire at the end of the day to settle up with its omnibus account at that bank, netting over several hundred thousand customer transactions, perhaps for several hundred million dollars, your bank should be comfortable, even if it has very little exact knowledge about what happened today.

Probably the same story as yesterday, and tomorrow, and Compliance can sleep the sleep of the righteous, because their trusted peers have an appropriate degree of controls in place. The bank custodying the money mountain is thus certainly not aiding and abetting money laundering. It can rely on the second bank’s own surveillance and controls, in addition to the crypto firm’s compliance department. There will be many formal contractual promises and informal verbal or written assurances made about this. And this works and serious people can accept it but the factual probity of the high-velocity transactional bank is extremely load-bearing.

Silvergate was not a competently run institution.

SEN did not, in fact, have a robust controls environment. It, in fact (para 70), had functionally no transaction monitoring. Silvergate had bought a standard package that a lot of banks use for automated monitoring, but due a configuration issue, it was off for SEN transactions.

Carter describes this state of affairs as follows: “Silvergate’s transaction monitoring system for SEN had gone through an upgrade and experienced an outage.”

Silvergate was institutionally aware of the “outage” but unable to remediate it.

I have an engineering degree, have founded five software companies, have worked in the tech industry, and in my entire career, I have never described an engineering investment I failed to make for fifteen months as an “outage.” After a day it is an outage, after a week it’s a human competence issue, but after a year it ferments into sparkling tech strategy.

During that period, SEN transacted over a trillion dollars. Silvergate was not unaware that SEN had an up-and-to-the-right usage graph (congratulations!). They were just routinely ignorant of funds flows they were facilitating with their banking license, sized in the billions of dollars per day. We know this because of Silvergate’s contemporaneous internal communications, the technical reality of the artifacts they had purchased and implemented, and sworn statements in litigation and to regulators. It is beyond intellectually serious dispute.

What of it, though? Is that just a harmless paperwork glitch? I'm glad you asked.

Intrabank book transfers are historically low-risk for money laundering because they’re ineffective at accomplishing layering: the same Compliance department can see both legs. Moreover, the majority of them are between entities known to be under common control. The purpose of layering is to break the chain of surveillance; swapping between your left pocket and your right pocket in front of a Compliance officer doesn’t accomplish this. This assumption of low-risk was apparently, per Silvergate’s employees, baked very hard into ATMS-B, the new-and-improved monitoring suite Silvergate had implemented.

However, SEN transactions, while implemented as intrabank book transfers, are in fact high-risk. The designed intent of SEN is to allow counterparties not under common control to settle one half of a transaction, at very high velocity. The other half generally occurs on a blockchain, unsurveilled by the bank. Seeing one half of transactions is fairly risky. Seeing neither half sounds like you are swapping bank deposits for cash equivalents, at the scale of billions of dollars per day, with no functional AML monitoring program in place.

This is not just me saying it. Kathleen Fischer, Chief Risk Office of Silvergate, said internally, of the lack of SEN monitoring: “We have known of this issue and either we have established other controls to account for it or we haven’t, and we have to take our lumps.”

Silvergate had not, in fact, established other controls.

Carter claims that all clients of the bank had gone through rigorous KYC and onboarding processes. Silvergate may have consistently conducted KYC and onboarding processes, but one could forgive a skeptic for believing them to be pro forma.

Silvergate onboarded several entities relating to Binance, a confessed criminal conspiracy which extensively engaged in money laundering. Binance and its management are Bond villains; they gleefully flouted the law and engaged in jurisdictional gamesmanship to avoid financial regulation, for years. Binance et al transacted $22 billion through Silvergate.

Mandatory compliance training is such a drag, and sometimes we like to spice it up with fun games. Let's play Spot the Red Flags together.

We have just received an account application from a Seychelles-domiciled corporation beneficially owned by a globally notorious billionaire. He disclaims any permanent address. The beneficial owner receives regular negative news coverage. He and his company have received multiple orders to cease business from peer nations. Those orders cite offering financial services without a license, suspicion of money laundering, willfully non-compliant posture, and extensive documented lies to regulators. The corporation has no operations or employees; it is strictly a shell. The planned funds flow is receiving inbound wire transfers, including international wire transfers, from counterparties which the bank will have only fragmentary third degree knowledge of. The corporation intends to immediately transfer those deposits to a third-party financial institution. This is to facilitate those counterparties’ purchase of pseudonymous bearer instruments, specifically, cash equivalents. The corporation anticipates billions of dollars of volume, in transaction sizes up to eight figures.

Silvergate happily opened an account (pg 4) for Key Vision Development Limited, the above-described shell company, and allowed it to deposit and withdraw over $11 billion. Now, credit where credit is due, Silvergate did debank Key Vision Development Limited in 2021. The record doesn’t say why, but perceptive readers may be able to hazard a guess. But Binance’s main entities still enjoyed attentive service, or perhaps more to the point they enjoyed all the inattention they were getting with their service, until the bank folded.

But the main rake Silvergate stepped on, repeatedly, was its relationship with FTX/Alameda and its executives. They were collectively the bank’s largest client and comprised tens of percent of its deposits. Silvergate’s monitoring of their usage was minimally grossly inadequate, as the bank and its executives admit.

Carter quotes an unnamed Silvergate executive as saying the following, which is roughly consistent with their prior statements to the media and to regulators.

Where we were not as buttoned up as we should have been was in regards to the FTX/Alameda clients. That was a function of the bank growing incredibly quickly[.] … Probably we could have figured out FTX was brokering deposits via Alameda. In retrospect I think we could have pieced this together and figured it out. But this is not a legal failure and we’re not required to catch everything. Our program passed legal muster. That’s something we could have done a better job of. But there was no intentional wrongdoing or cooperation with the bad guys.

This is consistent with things they have said previously, but does not demand unlimited deference.

Ryan Salame, a subject matter expert in laundering crypto money through the banking system (skills described by his lawyers, see pg 7 and onwards), tweeted that it beggars belief that Silvergate did not know that Alameda Research and North Dimension were in fact receiving FTX customer funds flow. Salame has repeatedly stated that Silvergate intentionally orchestrated that funds flow in concert with him. Even if it had not, Salame is just right: even if FTX concocted the scheme internally and even if Salame somehow managed to push all the buttons himself, Silvergate had to know.

But suppose you credit neither Salame nor I with understanding how banks work, or you demand unquestioning deference to executives’ denials, perhaps because one believes that a bank executive would never ever lie. The picture most favorable to Silvergate is that, during multiple years of being monomaniacally focused on growth to the neglect of its responsibilities under the law, it routinely underperformed the competence bar required of regulated financial institutions in the United States.

Silvergate voluntarily liquidated in the wake of the FTX implosion. Limited props for them here: they managed to do this in a mostly orderly fashion, as opposed to Signature, which had substantially less crypto exposure but blew up. (Signature had an analogous book transfer API product, called Signet. It is a smaller part of their story.)

Carter has a number of complaints with regards to supervisory activities relating to Silvergate Bank. One of those is that he alleges the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency disallowed Silvergate from selling SEN. I find this allegation very plausible, if not specifically evidenced. Silvergate was operating a trillion dollar laundering machine which had drawn immediate demands for corrective action for an extended period, had not taken aggressive corrective action, and then had proximately caused enormous consumer harm in a way which was maximally embarrassing to many policy actors. When the bank’s Chief Risk Officer predicted incoming lumps, these were the sort of lumps she was predicting.

Carter further alleges, and I think this is substantially original reporting (and good on him for it), that the FDIC and other banking regulators gave verbal guidance that banks should get crypto deposits below 15% to be “safe and sound.” If a banking regulator invokes those words, they are not making a suggestion. Carter complains that there is no statutory authority to pick this arbitrary number, that this threshold makes banking crypto functionally impossible, and that it is specifically chosen to kill targeted banks.

Some regulators are disclosure regulators. The SEC comes to mind. Some regulators are prudential regulators. The ordinary operation of prudential regulators is to take broad statutory direction and transform it, sometimes via the rulemaking process and sometimes via more informal guidance (and, even the FDIC will tell you, “moral suasion”). This process yields both concrete asks and fuzzier spectral ranges subject to ongoing negotiation between regulators and the regulated.

Does the FDIC have statutory authority to pick magic numbers? Yes, in the political system of the United States, it does, and it can cite that authority to you at length. The FAA has statutory authority to pick magic numbers for bolt torque. The FDA has statutory authority to pick magic numbers for permissible flow rates for ketchup.

Are regulators overreaching here? Not obviously so! Look at the above description of Operation Choke Point and their theory of regulatory authority there. It requires magical thinking to connect banking a payday lender, reputational risk, a run on your bank, and endangering the deposit insurance fund. It very much does not require magical thinking to think that crypto deposits are flighty, correlated, and could cause a run! We were experiencing actual crypto-induced runs!

A reasonable argument can be made that the problem with regulators was not abuse of discretion. It was needing to pay for past regulatory mistakes and/or missed opportunities with overcorrection following substantial consumer harm. Examiners (stunningly) missed that Silvergate’s new business model, which they had IPOed on the strength of, had materially changed from its days as a sleepy two-branch real estate bank! That reasonable argument has been alluded to… by the Federal Reserve! See Findings, pg 2.

Does the 15% threshold make it generally impossible to bank crypto? Empirically not; other bank’s crypto practices are well beneath that threshold, which likely informed how it was chosen. Metropolitan, for example, had about 25% at the peak and then drew down to 6%. It fairly persuasively told stakeholders that it had done a good job of risk management. And, not incidentally, Metropolitan is still with us. And so regulators could very reasonably say: “OK! 6% is all-else-equal green, 14% is yellow, we don’t want you spiking to 25% anymore, 96% is deep #%*(#(ing don’t even think about it red.”

And you could make this same observation about many banks with a crypto practice. Coinbase doesn’t keep customers' money in a mattress. Their main bank’s crypto exposure is… FORTRESS BALANCE SHEET</Dimon not actually grabbing the keyboard>.

Carter further alleges or insinuates (it’s a bit unclear at times which he is going for) that Senator Warren and/or regulators colluded with short sellers to intentionally kill Silvergate, via sparking a liquidity crisis.

He specifically cites this letter by Warren et al, which includes the sentence “Should it need extra liquidity, your bank has access to taxpayer dollars through the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco and the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco.”

Carter argues that sentence was intentionally inserted to put pressure on FHLBSF to demand repayment of advances. That would force Silvergate to find liquidity at a time where that would be incredibly difficult. Silvergate, subsequent to that letter, did repay those advances, and said in a securities filing that this required them to accelerate securities sales, leading to rumors in the industry that this forced their hand on deciding to close. FHLBSF has squarely denied pressuring them to accelerate repayment.

Short sellers made a killing on Silvergate, certainly. I absolutely believe that short sellers communicated with Senator Warren and regulators and additionally would credit that they did this strategically to bring pressure to bear against the bank. Evidence in favor: they say they did and bragged about it, while nailing Silvergate's hide to the wall.

But the reason short sellers made billions shorting Silvergate is primarily because they were right and early about Silvergate.

Marc Cohodes (a noted short who was deeply short Silvergate) and Ram Ahluwalia (a crypto investor with a very good understanding of bank regulation) had a debate about Silvergate prior to its collapse. I will not recount it for you on a line-by-line basis, but on listening to it at release, I felt “Cohodes is winning this by a mile, despite Ahluwalia being better calibrated on whether banking a single money launderer would indict a compliance program in the eyes of a regulator.” (I was at the time effectively constrained from trading in bank stocks, but I took professionally significant action after listening to that podcast.)

I think one could make some criticisms of Cohodes, or of short sellers generally, but “They were fundamentally more wrong than right about the short thesis, and needed government intervention to make it pay out” requires ignoring mountains of evidence. You are invited to look back, with full oracular hindsight, on what Cohodes said in that presentation.

A heuristic I have long used, as a once-upon-a-time debater: if one side is impressively detail oriented, and randomly selected details are trivially sustained, and the other side doesn’t allege details but pounds the table a lot, bet on the first team.

Or, if you want, you can bet on their former executives. Their former CTO (after being Chief Operations Officer), who is also the CEO’s son, has a Twitter account. You can find his side of the story on it. For a bank executive he is remarkably cavalier with characterizing the contents of communications from his regulators.

For example, he writes “The Sunday after Thanksgiving in 2022, regulators went after 5 banks simultaneously[.] Up to that point the regulators were not objecting, Silvergate brought them along, and suddenly everything changed[.]”

In fact, in April 2022, Silvergate had received a Matters Requiring Immediate Attention (MRIA) from the Federal Reserve specifically concerning the adequacy of its BSA/AML monitoring program. They received a similar MRIA in November, but by that time, they were cooked. See SEC complaint, para 80, substantially confirming representations made in a deposition by “Former Employee 5” (a Compliance official) in this lawsuit, which explicitly allege MRIAs. A MRIA, as distinct from a Matters Requiring Attention (MRA; a formalized supervisory directive which they expect you to pay substantial attention to in the ordinary course of business), is a drop-everything-and-fix-immediately command.

The Federal Reserve has required language (pg 3) for when it communicates MRIAs. The Federal Reserve supervises many banks, at all levels of scale and sophistication. This includes small town community banks where board members are typically local real estate developers. To ensure that low-sophistication bank executives or board members do not miss the fact that an MRIA is both an order and a shot across the bows and should be understood as such, that language is: “The board of directors (or executive-level committee of the board) is required to immediately…” (bolded in original)

The SEC has since charged Silvergate executives with misrepresenting the truth to investors about the depth of their liquidity problems in the immediate wake of the FTX collapse.

Suppose one believes, arguendo, the protestations of Silvergate management that it had seen the implosion of their largest customer, and a ~70% outflow of deposits, and was still ready to keep chugging along.

In that world, is the regulator saying (approximately) “We support banking legal industries, given an adequate controls environment. However, you must get your crypto deposit concentration to below 15%?” compatible with the continued existence of Silvergate specifically, after early November 2022?

I agree here with Carter and crypto advocates: no meaningful concentration limit on crypto is compatible with the continued existence of Silvergate after early November 2022. Even a 50% concentration limit is impossible; 15% is worse.

Simple math: for each dollar of deposits that you don’t bleed off, and you really can’t bleed off many post-run, you need to find someone willing to deposit about $5. Even if your sales pitch made angels weep to hear it, that is an impossibly tall order. Silvergate had no path to swiftly raising many billions of dollars of deposits from non-crypto depositors.

Silvergate had attracted its existing deposits via what would most charitably be described as intense attention to the needs of the crypto industry. It had no advantage over any bank in the U.S. vis banking any other individual or industry, and it had many disadvantages. It was under a PR cloud, because facts about its behavior over the last few years were being reported. It was obviously wobbling as an enterprise.

Most deposits are attracted by offering routine bank services (the sort that Silvergate had no edge on providing to non-crypto clients). This is referred to in industry as the “deposit franchise.” Banks have an immediate option to raise deposits in a hurry, forgoing years of sponsoring Little League teams, showing up for the annual town festival, and asking about your holiday plans over a coffee. You can skip the sweat-and-smiles business and proceed directly to paying through the nose, by attracting the custom of sophisticated financial professionals who place money at the banks bidding highest for it in the country. This is called deposit brokering.

At any price Silvergate was capable of paying for deposits, there was a regional bank that would have matched or exceeded it, because (unlike Silvergate) many regional banks have a material first-party loan book (and ongoing origination apparatus) which they reasonably believed would continue to exist, and deposits are a funding source for that loan book (and apparatus).

A deposit broker would reasonably model that hypothetical replacement bank as being a higher priority for receiving extraordinary backstopping if that ended up being necessary. This would play into their credit analysis of that replacement bank if the deposit broker was trying to place, for example, a $200 million certificate of deposit, almost all of which is uninsured (subject to bank credit risk) absent extraordinary government backstop.

Crypto advocates are notably incurious about non-crypto banking and don’t seem to understand why non-crypto regional banks were being heavily shorted in late 2022 and early 2023. I believe that, for many crypto advocates, including some who are well-educated financial services professionals, including some whose portfolio include many financial services companies, this is not very cynically ignoring background unfavorable to their narrative. Rather, it is because they genuinely do not understand what a sudden hike in interest rates would do to the balance sheet of a bank, in the same way that many software engineers do not understand what a sudden interest rate hike will do to the value of their equity. I would credit the possibility that some crypto advocates do understand how bank balance sheets are affected by interest rates, and are choosing to not contradict their standard bearers in public.

I am unconvinced that the concentration limit was the but-for cause of Silvergate’s demise, though I could be persuaded to that view.

My default view is that if every government employee had been furloughed on Thanksgiving Silvergate would likely still have closed. Its regulators had utterly lost confidence in it, true, but its customers had also lost confidence in it, in no small part because a) they knew they had wired money to Silvergate and b) they knew they now didn’t have their money (because SBF et al had misappropriated it). That’s a bad set of facts for a long, happy banking relationship.

I also think, and won’t ask advocates to acknowledge this, that a post-investigation Silvergate which managed to exist would be unable to offer the product that people were really buying. It was the Schelling point for everybody in crypto. That is why SEN worked. In no conceivable universe does Silvergate keep Binance as a client after it gets put under the microscope. A crypto Schelling point which Binance can’t touch is not a crypto Schelling point. Absent that Schelling point, if Silvergate was simply a bank that would let you park a $3 million seed round and cut paychecks while you worked on your solidity… that Silvergate is not a business. And it’s a bad time to not be a business while you’re sitting on a portfolio of MBS in late 2022 and early 2023.

But suppose arguendo that the government intentionally precipitated conditions incompatible with Silvergate continuing to remain in business and also that this was the but-for cause of Silvergate’s demise.

Is that a norms violation? Do we allow the government to close banks?

If you’ve worked in the financial industry in any capacity, you went to mandatory Compliance training. Attendance is taken and you likely had a refresher annually. And there were smirks, and jokes. And your trainer said, very seriously, “Pay attention. This is important. If we eff this up, they can do anything to us, most likely large fines but up to and including closing this firm. You, personally, could go to jail.”

Most people in finance heed this lesson. Every year, some don’t, and they learn why this training is mandatory.

Should we allow government to close banks? Yes.

Reasonable people can disagree as to the thresholds that extraordinary remedy should require and the procedural form it should take.

If we were still on debate team, you might ask me for a concession “Government needs to specifically admit that Silvergate was intentionally closed” and I’d counter “Sure, will trade you: opposition needs to concede that Silvergate was actively aware including at the executive level that Alameda and North Dimension were intentionally receiving incoming FTX customer funds flows.” About fifteen minutes later, I think neither side is thrilled, both sides learned something they find edifying, and there probably exists mutual agreement that either Silvergate had to go. or in the alternative Absent extraordinary government support, Silvergate was doomed after the FTX fiasco.

Complaints that Signature Bank did not need to be placed in receivership

Carter believes Signature was targeted in an analogous fashion. In part this is in reliance on their board member Barney Frank, who maintained (in media interviews contemporaneous with the collapse, and after it) that Signature was solvent and had sufficient liquidity at the end of a week which had seen a bank run.

Perhaps some have forgotten the context of that week. On March 8, Wednesday, Silvergate announced it was closing. On March 10th, Friday, SVB was placed into receivership, after the most explosive bank run in history. On March 10th, still that same Friday, Signature experienced a run of $18.6 billion of deposits in the space of hours.

That context refreshed, let’s review where Signature believed its business was on March 11th and 12th, over that weekend.

Signature experienced difficulties telling a plausible story involving numbers which added up (pg 35) that weekend. Quoting that postmortem:

Signature needed to provide reliable and realistic data, particularly concerning immediately available liquidity and ongoing deposit withdrawals, to inform the analysis the Regulators and Signature needed to perform to understand the Bank’s liquidity position. Once Signature began providing any data on these key issues, the Regulators found the data was inconsistent and that it continuously changed in material ways.

Signature execs, et al, were on a series of conference calls with regulators for an entire weekend. They began with regulators taking note of the bank run and candidly announcing the bank was in mortal peril. Signature proceeded, in the regulators’ view, to confabulate about liquidity sources, composition and quality of assets, and current withdrawal requests pending, through either malfeasance or spectacularly poorly timed technical incompetence. Regulators felt that, at this pivotal moment, Signature was dangerously disconnected with reality, like an executive describing the weekend as (this is a quote) “uneventful thus far.”

It is a serious accusation to say Signature was confabulating. Banking regulators are (mostly) serious people.

Quoting the postmortem again:

For example, through Sunday afternoon, Signature represented to the Regulators that nearly $6 billion in liquidity from its commercial real estate portfolio would “Very Likely” be available to the Bank on Monday. The Regulators were aware, however, that it would take weeks for the FRBNY to review and value that portfolio.

Was Signature aware that its commercial real estate portfolio could not possibly be good collateral on Monday? Manifestly so.

A brief explanation for the benefit of readers unfamiliar with commercial real estate (CRE) banking:

Signature’s plan was to pledge portions of its CRE loan portfolio to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York the Monday after the critical weekend. It thought that the Fed would credit them for the value of the portfolio less some haircut. Signature would then immediately wire what the Fed credited them to the customers demanding their deposits. Simple as.

However, CRE loans are not fungible, easy-to-analyze assets like e.g. Treasury bills or even mortgage-backed securities. They’re complex, bespoke legal agreements, in the best of times. 2023 was not the best of times for the New York commercial real estate market, as anyone who reads the newspaper is aware, and so you can’t simply value those loans by copying outstanding balances into Excel then chugging a tiny bit of math. You’ve got to read the darn things, construct a model (which, if you were someone with skin in the game, would asymptotically approach re-underwriting those loans because New York CRE is that bad), come up with your impaired valuation, and then, haircut that.

Signature Bank had a crypto sideline but its beating heart was the New York CRE market. This is a bank that breathed New York real estate. It beggars belief that they thought that portfolio would be Very Likely to be good collateral in merely wall-clock hours of work.

You know what this reminds me of? This reminds me of one Sam Bankman-Fried who, on finding himself in what he believed to be a survivable liquidity crisis, began wildly writing indicative numbers down on napkins and/or Google Sheets. SBF still doesn’t understand why nobody believed him. Just look at the napkins!

We are not required to believe your napkins, Signature, if they contain obvious untruths, or if the napkins evolve wildly in inconsistent ways over the course of a single meeting.

The most critical question for Signature’s liquidity position was “How much money will customers wire out on Monday?” This is straightforward banking, which regulators pressed them to do all weekend: a) sum up how much money customers have asked for on Monday, in the hundreds of current pending wire requests b) project a worst case scenario for how that number will evolve, as more customers put in wire requests, before Monday morning.

Here is the time series (taken from above report, pg 40) of those two questions being asked repeatedly in a 48 hour window. Observe how often, a few hours after Signature has made a (new, even-more-worst-than-previous) worst case scenario, the known wire requests have already exceeded that worst case scenario.

Signature then communicated a new worst case scenario, which felicitously was only as far away from known wire requests as their previous worst case scenario had been, almost as if they were learning nothing from repeatedly being wrong.

This played out multiple times.

Signature believes it understood where it was that weekend. The above picture is almost proof positive that it did not. They also understood their experience of the weekend to be signaling how the worst was over.

Quoting postmortem again (pg 6):

Over the weekend, Signature’s estimates of pending deposit withdrawals increased, going from $2 billion on Saturday evening to $4 billion Sunday morning, and then to $7.4 billion to $7.9 billion by Sunday evening. These numbers represented known deposit withdrawals. Despite the run on Friday, March 10 and the negative news over the weekend, Signature insisted that additional withdrawals would be minimal on Monday. The Regulators assessed this projection as unrealistic and that the Bank needed to be prepared to handle another significant deposit run. (emphasis added)

Signature believes it could have white knuckled through the hurricane and emerged victorious on Monday. Then it had projections by which it would suddenly, indeed miraculously, have sufficient liquidity on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. And then the hard work would start. It would bank the heck out of its remaining customers, start finding buyers for its valuable assets over the ensuing months, and somehow pull this off. Because it was solvent!

Signature had critical liquidity issues, no real path to solving them, and lost the confidence of its regulators, during a bank run which was worsening by the hour. That is a recipe for receivership. No conspiracy is necessary to explain what happened.

The rest of the postmortem is worth reading, too, and deeply wonky in the way that excites banking nerds. Where else can you read a scintillating discussion on what capital call loans are acceptable collateral at the Fed emergency window?

Crypto likes novel crypto-using banking products

In 2022, the FDIC sent out a wave of letters to banks. Prying these letters from the FDIC has been a bit of a project, requiring Coinbase and other interested parties to do quite a bit of arm wrestling. The letters which have been released, grudgingly, are heavily redacted.

A brief commentary on transparency: democratic governance simultaneously requires substantial transparency and also requires the government to be able to have private conversations.

Curtains of secrecy are frequently invoked cynically to cover abuses. For example, you could say “That protest is a foreign influence operation! I cannot disclose my basis for thinking that, for reasons of national security! You should therefore act as my proxy to suppress this protest!” (Uh, spoiler alert, we will return to this later.)

In the culture that is banking supervision, however, privilege will frequently be asserted fairly maximally on routine supervisory communications with banks. This is because they are institutionally wary of causing risk to banks by signaling to the market or depositors that those banks have lost the confidence of regulators. Banking regulators are terrified of “self-fulfilling prophecies.”

You need to be able to have candid conversations with regulated entities for the same reason coworkers need to be able to have candid conversations with each other. Privacy enhances candor, even when those conversations implicate third parties, even when third parties would really love to be a fly on the wall.

And so I think there is a legitimate balancing act to be done here. But I’m sympathetic to crypto advocates who say (paraphrase) “This is backroom maneuvering to do something we don’t like. You won’t even admit the thing you are doing! And, confound you, after you are dragged kicking and screaming to admitting the thing, you’ll probably claim it is good! Like they did after Operation Choke Point!”

Conversely, when the government is capable of publishing extensively researched position papers and extensively footnoted indictments, that should give you more confidence that it is less likely to be engaged in lawless, arbitrary behavior. Not limitless confidence, certainly, but it is evidence in a direction.

Carter surmises that the expurgated supervisory letters are regarding NYDIG’s proposed product which would allow banks and credit unions to offer customers direct Bitcoin exposure. You can analogize this to the feature in Cash App which allows you to buy Bitcoin, without being able to transfer it, except it would happen in your banking app.

I think Carter is very likely (90%+) correct with respect to identifying the subject of these letters. Much of the pack is dated shortly before the FDIC did, indeed, publish public guidance about banks directly offering crypto products. NYDIG was the firm with the most progress against the opportunity (source: general industry knowledge) that otherwise fits with what we can read of the letters.

So: is this a stunning inversion of our democratic norms? No. Banking regulators get to weigh in on proposed banking products. That is the absolute core of the job. That will extremely routinely result in saying something which rounds, like many of the letters do, to “We are going to have a considered think about this and get back to you, but in the meanwhile, please don’t roll this out widely.” (The think was had; the results were published. Many crypto advocates do not like those results, and are asserting procedural irregularities because of that.)

Does this meaningfully prohibit the crypto industry from offering retail users financial services? No. You can buy Bitcoin exposure in Cash App, Venmo, Robinhood, Coinbase, Fidelity, Interactive Brokers, any brokerage account capable of trading U.S. ETFs, and many more places besides. Crypto advocates cheerfully blast out press releases about how many ways are coming online every week to buy their tokens from them at

虚构与金融

2024-10-08 03:54:55

节目提示：近期关于金钱的节目有些不规律。 我最近启动了Complex Systems播客，目前已超过十几集，其中包括采访我父亲关于房地产开发的内容（这算是BAM深度（路边）切片）。该播客每周都会邀请Bryne Hobart和其他你可能感兴趣的嘉宾。由于我更倾向于写作，而你可能更偏向阅读（毕竟你在这里），请注意我为所有剧集都提供了完整的编辑剧本（附有内嵌评论）。 我也尝试了超出我专业领域范围的定制工程工作，涉及复杂的资本结构，所需的管理关注非常显著。或者说：我们买了一栋房子，需要修缮。 我希望尽快恢复更合适的节奏，恳请各位的耐心（同时也要理解，当Factorio: Space Age发布时，我大概率会在接下来的几周内无法完成太多写作）。 小说作为影响现实世界和了解现实世界的一种手段，常常被低估。 《社交网络》（The Social Network）基本上是虚构的，更像是一种氛围的来源，而非事实的来源。即使这些氛围也未能与现实契合。然而，它却成功说服了许多早期创业公司提交YC申请。这与Michael Lewis之前的经历相呼应（他声称《谎言的代价》（Liar's Poker）基本上是事实，但旨在作为警示故事），他因此在金融界启动了许多职业生涯。 有时，小说不仅仅给你氛围，它还提供模型。《凤凰项目》（The Phoenix Project）实际上被一些基础设施公司采用，因为其叙事使项目管理的教育变得更容易接受。（常与《目标》（The Goal）相比较，后者对制造业有类似作用。） 本着这种精神，我有几个极具个人见解的金融小说推荐，这些作品更多人应该阅读。 我有意避开了某些非常值得阅读的书籍，它们涉及金融主题。《铁银行》（The Iron Bank）是一个荒谬的虚构，其商业模式毫无逻辑（如果你在信用分析上表现不佳，却依靠赢得战争来弥补，那你不是银行，而是私人军事承包商）。虽然Thorin的公司确实因股份类别之间权利划分不清晰而暂时破产，但这只是一个微不足道的细节。 《大空头》（The Big Short，书和电影）——在Michael Lewis开始其金融题材小说创作之前，这本书是关于一群局外人（以及被设定为局外人的内部人士，这是Lewis经常采用的主题，但并非总是有自知之明）正确预测了全球金融危机的机制和进程的戏剧化呈现。该作品基本上是准确的（尽管它对回购融资的讨论可能不够深入，这是非专业人士最容易忽略的危机关键点）。国会证词、行业分析师以及与当时在场人员的晚餐对话大多与之相符。 对于那些对抵押贷款金融不太熟悉的读者来说，电影中的Jenga场景比大多数正式的入门指南更能直观地解释资产支持证券。而且它与德意志银行用于该交易提案的实际推介材料完全一致，这是一次金融写作的杰出典范，而读者知道这些作者最终是完全正确的，更是锦上添花。（世界上许多最好的写作永远隐藏在水下；你之所以能感知到这冰山的一角，是因为它成为了国会调查的证据。） 无论是书籍还是电影，都深入探讨了一个关键见解：仅仅正确且反主流并不足够，如果你想要赚钱。你还需要一个工具来编码你的赌注，一个资金来源，以及相当可观的操作能力。这包括对手方风险管理，尤其是在预测我们所知世界的终结时尤为重要。 《交易员》（Margin Call，电影）——《交易员》是一部虚构化的作品，描绘了在金融危机后期，一家可能属于任何人的投资银行内部的状况，而非绝对的高盛。虽然它涵盖了与《大空头》相似的程序内容，但它并不是学习机制的特别好的方式。 但它在描绘那些既戏剧性又真实地反映行业各层级工作人员的原型方面，几乎无人能及。 电影中最关键的两个场景都是会议，而该电影比《大空头》更尊重观众；没有人需要泡在浴缸里才能吸引你的注意力。这些场景在YouTube上催生了一个子类别的评论者，他们解释着其中的潜台词，即角色们（以非常精准的说服力光谱）在某些他们实际上确知的事情上表现出不知情，以及资本顶端高管之间的权力动态，类似的情节。 如果你从《交易员》中带走一个东西，那就是Carmelo这个角色。在CEO要求执行一项任务后，一位高薪高管报告称不可能完成，Carmelo在电影中只有一句话：“已经完成。”一些评论者认为，Carmelo代表了投资银行背后一个无情、愿意使用暴力的帮手。这些评论者未能理解Carmelo出现在这个会议中的意义，也未能理解为什么他在电影中取得成功。Carmelo是剧情需要，象征着在非常时期愿意超越正常流程的行动力和执行力。Carmelo并不是任何特定的人，但许多组织都有这样的Carmelo，而且可能更多应该如此。 《龙的银行家》（The Dragon's Banker，书）——有时，书名会让你一开始就有兴趣，但随后却未能准确反映实际内容。这正是《龙的银行家》的精髓。你怎么可能毁掉这本书？它有龙，它们需要银行服务。它们的银行家则全力以赴地为它们提供服务。结果发现，给龙提供银行服务其实很困难，因为它们有着多样化的金融需求和对银行家的高要求。书中的内容对私人银行家来说并不陌生。 但对我们大多数人来说，都不是私人银行家，而这本书甚至比一个非常熟悉该类型的读者更进一步。我甚至在书中的某个页面之前，就忍不住想：“哈，这个主意很妙，但当然，龙肯定会因为无法通过KYC和AML审查而失败。” 考虑到背景设定，这并不是一个糟糕的计划。此外，某种程度上是自我满足，书中银行家这个角色让我感觉最为被代表（尽管如果我真的是书中的角色，我肯定不会采用他对待定价服务的方式。如果你不习惯对富裕客户按市场价收费，那么私人银行业务就不是一个适合你的领域。没有一个客户能让你彻底毁灭，就不值得你与之交谈！） 《匕首与硬币》（The Dagger and the Coin，书系列）——让资本主义的名称永远不被指控只拥有一个龙/银行交叉题材。这是一部该类型中值得称道的作品。它稍显不足的是，有大量情节与银行业无关，角色也几乎不与龙互动。但所有这些无关的琐碎内容使它成为我读过的最被低估的奇幻系列之一。（它有一个最好的转折，几乎将作品重新定义为低调的宇宙恐怖。） 更相关的是，我们得到了一个相当接近美第奇家族但又不完全相同的商人银行的详细描绘。与《铁银行》不同，这个银行拥有一个合理的商业模式和客户群，主要专注于为海上航行的商人分散风险，以及为陆地生产性企业进行资本发展。商人银行业务在金融爱好者中被严重误解，但它对金融历史至关重要（并且至今仍在以衍生形式存在）。 特别推荐：《夏洛克之子》（Shylock’s Children，日本电影）——有字幕的版本存在且可授权——我曾在飞机上看过一次，但该电影在日本的发行规模相对较小，可能在流媒体服务上不容易找到。这是个遗憾，如果你能找到它，那绝对值得花时间观看。 剧情围绕东京一家银行分行的欺诈行为展开。想象一下这个推销会议：“又是一部警察程序片？”“虽然有些夸张，但也许这个世界真的需要一些上班族之间的硬核银行业动作。我想要像墨迹在印鉴注册证明（inkantourokushoumeisho，证明个人或公司印章在相关地方政府机构注册的文件）上那样清晰的现实主义。” “不过，为了使剧情成立，还需要在这家分行发生足以影响整个国家的欺诈行为。但我们会塑造一些如此真实的角色，以至于上班族会以为我们办公室里装有监控摄像头，场景布置会让他们产生回忆，以及一场深刻探讨道德责任和在诱惑下坚持原则的艰难抉择的沉思。它将很好地补充《金钱谎言》（Lying for Money）等关于欺诈雪球的文本。当然，我们还会用莎士比亚作为叙事的框架，因为这些角色当然会参加东京的莎士比亚演出，而我们的观众也不需要被告知这是非常正常的事情。” 如果你有机会观看，那将是一场绝妙的体验。 下次见，如果你还没听过Complex Systems播客，请务必收听。它可以在你选择的播客平台或网站上找到。