In early March, the United States saw its second-largest bank failure since 2008 when Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) collapsed due to its customers’ concerns over the liquidity of the bank.
SVB customers — mostly startup companies that deposited large sums of money from investors during the pandemic, when startups were hot and being online became a necessity — withdrew a total of $42 billion, leaving SVB cashless and with a negative balance of nearly $1 billion in just 48 hours.