Silvergate Capital, the holding company for crypto banks, has decided to delay the launch of its long-awaited stablecoin, CEO Alan Lane said during Tuesday’s call for third-quarter results. California-based Silvergate Capital, the parent company of Silvergate Bank, announced in January that it was working on its own payment-focused stablecoin after acquiring intellectual property, infrastructure and related tools from blockchain developer Diem. Group. The delay is not due to technical issues, Lane said during the interview, noting that the technology was ready when Silvergate took it over from Diem.
“Unfortunately, we don’t expect it to happen this year,” Lane said. The technology is ready to go, but the company “works with regulators and policymakers to make sure we do it right,” explained Lane. “We still firmly believe that we are in the best position than any other bank to run a safe and solid tokenized dollar on the blockchain,” he added.
Read : WazirX Founder-Led Lay-1 Blockchain Startup Shardeum Closes $18.2 Million Seed Funding Round
Silvergate Bank is one of the largest cryptocurrency banks on the market. In early 2022, Silvergate Capital acquired the Diem cryptographic technology, a stablecoin Meta Platforms project (formerly Facebook) launched in early 2019.
Silvergate offers loans to various crypto companies accepting Bitcoin as collateral. Earlier this year, economic intelligence firm MicroStrategy took out a substantial loan from Silvergate while also putting its Bitcoins as collateral.
MicroStrategy said it will use these funds to buy more Bitcoins. It was also the largest loan guaranteed by any Bitcoin holding company. The company’s CEO, Alan Lane, said he is still stubborn in the Bitcoin lending business and expects it to grow over time.
However, in a broader market setting, Lane remains practical and expects the pain in the market to continue for a while. “In the coming quarters, the cryptocurrency industry may still be a challenge for some crypto exchanges and funds. But at some point it will all be over, and we will just wait for the next catalyst, ” he said in an interview with CoinDesk in July.