Founded in La Jolla, California in the late 1980s, Silvergate began as a traditional commercial bank, but started exploring the idea of serving the digital asset industry in 2013.
After finding recent success, Silvergate has since pivoted and is now almost entirely focused on providing banking services to cryptocurrency-related companies, largely through its SEN 24/7 payment network.
To date, usage of the SEN network has largely been free, outside of a minimum cash deposit balance that must be maintained by clients (a source of "free" deposit funding). Recently the company has explored new product enhancement of SEN through the introduction of SEN Leverage, a product that allows customers to obtain U.S. dollar loans collateralized by bitcoin in order to trade on margin. Other fee income from digital asset customers includes FX exchange and other cash/deposit services.