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Ever since the January 3 joint statement from the OCC, Federal Reserve, and FDIC, we've seen more cryptocurrency companies struggle to find consistent banking than we have in years.

As Sam Bankman-Fried once said in a customer testimonial on the Silvergate website, life as a crypto firm can be divided into two time periods: before Silvergate and after Silvergate.

Unfortunately for crypto firms, we appear to be returning to the before Silvergate period. Silvergate has made it clear that they may no longer be viable and this has led exchanges like Coinbase and LedgerX to sever ties, with LedgerX moving to Signature Bank.

LedgerX has moved to another crypto-friendly bank, Signature. Only, this might not prove to be a wise transition – Kraken has had to part ways with Signature Bank for many of its transactions. Signature Bank also previously communicated its intention to move away from the crypto market, though not entirely.

Going back to a time period before plentiful crypto-friendly banking doesn't look good for the industry. Jesse Powell, CEO of Kraken, once tweeted in 2019 that he had to "employ the arts of a money launderer to survive" where he had to switch between different "rented PayPal accounts" and Kraken had to spread "deposits across several banks."

Phil Potter, then chief strategy officer of Bitfinex and Tether, once described in a WhalePool-hosted conversation how the entities relied on "lots of cat and mouse tricks" in order to maintain access to banking and that "sometimes those accounts get shut down because the correspondent banks realize this is Bitcoin related."

Silvergate warns investors it may not survive the year, shares drop 30%

The New York Attorney General investigation into Bitfinex and Tether also revealed that Bitfinex would rely on companies controlled by Bitfinex and Tether executives and accounts controlled by friends of the executives to handle withdrawals and deposits. This was besides the "payments processors" like Crypto Capital Corp that companies like Kraken, QuadrigaCX, and Bitfinex and Tether relied on.

Reliance on those payment processors specifically would eventually lead to serious operational difficulties for Bitfinex and Tether when hundreds of millions of dollars they gave to Crypto Capital Corp without a contract or agreement were seized as part of a global money laundering investigation targeting (allegedly) the money launders for the Colombian cartels.

Without consistent access to banking once again, there's a good chance that crypto firms will return to a variety of unconventional and disreputable suppliers of banking-like services.

Introducing: A weekly playlist from the Protos newsroom

In happier news, we've decided to launch a Spotify playlist. We've got several music lovers in the newsroom – with a diverse mix of genres, there's something for everyone. Expect new music every Friday, as a nice little addition to your Discover Weekly playlist.