Signature says that it is not just a crypto bank because it is deployed by deposits

The Signature Bank plans to repel deposits of up to $ 10 billion that are bound to the cryptocurrency industry, a turnaround for a US loan who achieved a quick growth after he had aggressively advertised digital assets.

The step comes when the crypto industry is recorded by turbulence after falling token prices and the bankruptcy of the FTX exchange, a customer of signature. The shares of the Bank based in New York fell by more than 50 percent this year after it was the stock with the best performance in KBW Bank Index last year.

About 23 percent of Signature customer deposits of $ 103 billion were related to the crypto industry in mid-November. It is now striving to reduce the proportion to less than 20 percent and ultimately less than 15 percent of the total deposits, Chief Operating Officer Eric Howell said at an industry conference on Tuesday.

"We are not just a crypto bank and we want this to come across loudly and clearly," he said.

The reduction in crypto engagement meant that signature "would repel. Obvious $ 8 to $ 10 billion in this area, which we can easily cover through cash and loans," said Howell.

Signature is one of the few state-regulated US banks, which is known that they have accepted large deposits of crypto customers after they started the business four years ago to accept crypto exchanges, stable co-emitters and Bitcoin miner as customers. This helped to triple the deposits of signature of $ 33.4 billion in 2017.

ftx, led by Sam Bankman-Fried, was one of the largest crypto exchanges in the world before her collapse in November. Signature said last month that his deposit relationship with FTX and its affiliated companies made less than 0.1 percent of its total deposits.

The Signature share price fell by around 4.5 percent in New York's trade on Tuesday. His other business areas include asset management and fund loans through which it financed capital calls to investment funds on behalf of customers.

As a further sign of concern about losses on the cryptom market that spread to US creditors, Silvergate, another US bank, who received interludes from crypto-coaches, defends their role this week when accepting their deposits by FTX and Alameda Research, one of the founded trading group Bankmann-Fried.