Mike Lempres on Silvergate’s Collapse, Bank Regulation, and Debanking (EP.593)
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So I'm sitting here with Mike Lemprest, who was the, chairman of Silvergate, deeply involved in that bank and very knowledgeable in terms of the situation. This is very I'm very excited to have Mike, first of all. So thank you for joining us. Really appreciate it.
Thank you. You know, you got a great show, and it's great to be part of it.
And today is a very auspicious, and exciting day, at least the day on which we're publishing this episode. The, senate is having a hearing on debanking, and tomorrow, the house is gonna be having a hearing on operation choke point two point o. So, you know, it's all happening in Washington. We're gonna get to the bottom of this, but, you know, I'm so glad you agreed to come on. I think it's time to tell the story from Silvergates and from your perspective, and no one's done it yet, you know? So couldn't be more excited to have you on this podcast. It's something we talked about a lot, but ther
That's great. And there's lots of reasons people haven't been talking about it, but I think the time is is right to begin to talk about it.
So, I think maybe before we start, why don't you just tell us about yourself? You've you've had a very interesting career all across, you know, many different areas of life, law, banking, tech, crypto as well. So briefly recap for us how you came to be chairman of Silvergate.
Sure. Well, I I see myself as a lawyer at heart, with a broader background than perhaps most lawyers have. But for me, it started, you know, I started essentially as almost a regulator. I worked at got a White House fellowship after, a little bit after law school and, worked in the Department of Justice. Thoroughly enjoyed that experience, and learned a ton from it. Got a lot of respect for the people who who work in government. Then went out and practiced law, became general counsel of a a stock exchange, the old Pacific Coast Stock Exchange, and, went back into government to become an assist
Wow. What an incredible background. So you've seen it from both sides, you know, being inside of the DOJ and being, involved in Coinbase. So, obviously, Coinbase had interesting, banking issues early in their history. And, Andreessen, I think intervened, I think, is the story. And, that's one of the reasons they were able to survive and and thrive.
Yeah. It's it's really incredible that that banks were able to pick winners and losers in the space by who they chose to bank and didn't bank. And I'd love to say there's some great science to it, but I don't think there was. I mean, I think it was much much more haphazard than that. Yeah.
I mean, you know, we're gonna talk about debanking and, you know, I started complaining about that loudly in early twenty three, but bank access has been a huge problem in this industry for years. And it's really a matter of if you had it, then you were able to survive. And if you didn't, you know, that's it was just one of those unfortunate things about the crypto space. So Silvergate, when did Silvergate start to explicitly focus on supporting the crypto sector?
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