Silicon Valley Bank, worth more than $200bn, was the 16th largest bank in the US until last Friday. However, come March 10, 2023, everything changed, as it collapsed under the might of an investment (in long-dated US government bonds) gone wrong, leading to concerns of another banking crisis.
As the most preferred destination for startups and the tech sector in America, SVB mostly catered to the financial needs of technology companies worldwide. However, thanks to numerous ill-advised investment decisions, the bank started selling a few bonds for high losses, leading to concerns from investors and customers.
News of the organization’s collapse came out within 48 hours of disclosing that it was selling its assets. Basically, Silicon Valley Bank didn’t have enough funds to pay its depositors so California regulators closed it down.
Here’s a look at how the news was taken by the Twitch community and how the platform’s audiences reacted on the chats of various streamers.
SVS collapse makes news on Twitch
Many streamers on platforms like Twitch and YouTube discussed the issue with their viewers, explaining it and giving their takes on the matter. One positive development they would have been sure to inform audiences of was that SVB customers could access all their money from Monday morning.
This relief came late on Sunday, after US agencies guaranteed to cover all deposits at the bank. They also promised to help customers of another smaller institution that collapsed over the weekend, Signature Bank.
As a result of this interaction between content creators and fans on the SVB collapse on Twitch, chat rooms were heavy with references to the situation. Some of the most used terms between March 1, 2023, and March 14, 2023, included USA (366K mentions from 175K active chatters), Bank (141K from 80K), crisis (41K from 20K), insurance (27K from 20K), and Silicon Valley Bank SVB (11K from 7.5K), each ranking above 1.3 messages per user.
The word USA also had a high message per channel rate of 13, suggesting that quite a lot of users referred to the country when talking about this situation. Other words that ranked high on the list of mentions included bankruptcy, FDIC, bank collapse, Signature Bank, bank crisis, and Bank default.
It is a clear sign of many viewers being aware of what was happening and what and how they wanted to discuss it. Terms like republican, fraud, 20m, and defaulting were frequently used across chats when talking about the SVS Bank collapse.
One of the busiest big-name streamers, when it came to discussing the SVB collapse, was HasanAbi. He had 915 mentions about the issue on his chat from 511 active users, while Fitzyhere had 250 mentions from 104 active users.
OnlyMXC was a channel with a high message per user rate of 38.7, signifying that it was a keen observer of happenings, notching 387 mentions from 10 active users. Since the handle is a fan-run one where people can exchange thoughts and idea, such a high engagement rate from them would make sense.
It looks unlikely that the government will save SVB, meaning it will remain collapsed or have its assets distributed to creditors unless a buyer takes it over. What we can be sure of is that it will remain a topic of discussion among streamers and their viewers for a long time.
