Daily Tech News 11 March 2023

• Silicon Valley Bank, with $175 billion in deposits, went splut and has been taken over by the FDIC. (Tech Crunch)
  
  This doesn't appear to be the usual Ponzi scheme or outright theft that we have become familiar with in recent years, but instead a good old-fashioned bank run. SVB apparently held 97% of its $209 billion in assets in long-term mortgage-backed securities.
  
  Which is fine unless rumours start circulating of trouble at your bank and more than 3% of your customers want to withdraw their money at the same time.
  
  Which is exactly what happened.
  
  
  
• SVB is - was - a proper, regulated bank so if you had less than $250k in your account it's insured and you'll have access to it on Monday. If you had half a billion in there - like Roku - you're not going to be seeing your money any time soon. (CNBC)
  
  You probably will see your money, since assets significantly exceeded deposits, but now that the government is involved it won't be quick.
  
  
  

• If you were holding funds in the USDC stablecoin you should also start panicking. (Tech Crunch)
  
  Circle - the company running USDC - says it held $3.3 billion in liquid reserves at SVB. The whole point of a stablecoin is that it is backed 1:1 with cash equivalents at banks, and apparently that was the case, right up until the bank ceased to exist.
  
  The result has been billions of dollars in transfers of USDC and congestion and soaring gas prices on the Ethereum blockchain, which to be fair is what happens any time a gnat farts in the crypto world.
  
  
  
• The EU, being run by retards, effectively banned 8k TVs. (Tom's Guide)
  
  8k TVs use more power than lower resolution models, and the EU set power consumption limits that would require 8k TVs to run at miserably low brightness settings.
  
  So Samsung, not being run by retards, set its 8k TVs in Europe to run at miserably low brightness settings out of the box, with a button to turn off the crippling eco mode, which since it's an action by the individual and not the company does not violate the regulations.
  
  
  
• G.Skill has announced 8GHz 24GB DDR5 memory modules. (WCCFTech)
  
  Pricing was not announced. It will be interesting to see what it costs - and what voltage it runs at - because that is faster than LPDDR5X laptop memory.

posted by Pixy Misa at 04:15 AM

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