American venture capital company
Digital Currency Group Inc. (DCG) is a venture capital company focusing on the digital currency market. It is located in Stamford, Connecticut. The company has the subsidiaries Foundry, Genesis, Grayscale Investments, and Luno. It also formerly owned CoinDesk.
History.
Founding and growth: 2015-2021.
Digital Currency Group was launched in 2015 by Barry Silbert, the former CEO of SecondMarket, Inc. He began investing in blockchain technology companies in 2013. Shortly after SecondMarket's sale, Silbert formed Digital Currency Group, with Genesis and Grayscale becoming the first of the company's subsidiaries.
In November 2021, the firm relocated its Manhattan headquarters to Stamford, Connecticut. The governor of Connecticut at the time, Ned Lamont, had provided financial incentives for the company to move to Stamford, including a $5 million grant if Digital Currency Group created at least 300 full-time jobs in the state.
As of November 2021, Digital Currency Group made over 200 investments in other cryptocurrency companies.
Genesis and sales: 2023.
By early 2023, DCG had over 160 companies in its portfolio, of which it had acquired 28. Subsidiaries included the crypto exchange Luno, and the firm Foundry for crypto mining. It was also an investor in Coinbase and Kraken, the firm Circle behind the stablecoin USDC, and the analytics companies Chainalysis, Dune Analytics, Elliptic, and Etherscan. In early January 2023, DCG laid off 30% of its staff. In response to growing dispute with shareholders, Barry Silbert in early 2023 argued against debtor Cameron Winklevoss' push to replace him as CEO.
In January 2023, the "Financial Times" reported that DCG was considering selling parts of its venture capital holdings to raise funds.
On January 19, 2023, Genesis Global Capital filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, citing over 100,000 creditors and liabilities of between $1 billion and $10 billion. In February 2023, DCG struck a deal with creditors to either sell its Genesis unit or turn its equity over to creditors. Specifically, on February 6, 2023, Genesis Global Holdco announced a possible agreement with its creditors and DCG, wherein DCG would give its equity interest in Genesis Global Trading (GGT) to Genesis Global Holdco. DCG would also refinance its loans from Genesis and exchange its existing $1.1 billion promissory note for convertible preferred stock issued by DCG. However, in April, some creditors walked away from the restructuring agreement.
In mid-May 2023, it was reported that DCG had missed a $630 million payment to Gemini, while owing the company $1.65 billion.
DCG stated that "due to the state of the broader economy and prolonged crypto winter, along with the challenging regulatory environment for digital assets in the U.S," it shut down TradeBlock, an institutional trading platform, on May 31, 2023. At that time, Luno was still owned by DCG. In July 2023, it was reported that DCG would sell CoinDesk for $125 million. At the time, DCG had closed HQ, its wealth management unit. With Barry Silbert remaining CEO, in July 2023, DCG appointed Mark Shifke as its CFO.
In July 2023, DCG's crypto lending arm Genesis Global was still undergoing bankruptcy proceedings. In July 2023, Gemini sued DCG in New York citing fraud, with the intent of reclaiming funds. In August 2023 DCG reportedly faced an unannounced probe by the New York Attorney General, who was seeking information related to the financial dealings of DCG's subsidiary Genesis.
A new Chapter 11 deal was agreed on with DCG and lender Genesis Global as well as a major creditor group in late August 2023. The agreement involved paying out up to 90% of the amount owed to Genesis customers using new loans.
In October 2023, the New York attorney general filed a lawsuit against DCG, Gemini Trust, and Genesis Capital for allegedly defrauding more than 230,000 investors of more than $1.1 billion. The companies allegedly lied to investors about the expected returns on their investments and in regard to their safety, while also concealing losses from them and the public. DCG replied that they would fight the claims, and that they were “shocked by the baseless allegations.”
Subsidiaries.
Genesis Global Capital.
Launched in 2013 by DCG, Genesis is a cryptocurrency trading, lending, and asset custody platform, targeting institutional clients and high net worth individuals. They claim to have been the first Bitcoin cryptocurrency desk.
Genesis acquired the London-based cryptocurrency custodial company Volt in early 2020. Genesis' sister company Grayscale Investments had been holding its cryptocurrency assets with the company Xapo, which had been acquired by Genesis' rival Bitcoin trading company Coinbase in 2019. News media speculated that Genesis' cryptocurrency custody would be transferred away from Coinbase and made internal to Greyscale after completion of the Volt acquisition.
In late June and early July 2022, Genesis publicly disclosed that it was exposed to hundreds of millions of dollars in losses from loans to both the Hong Kong-based cryptocurrency lender Babel Finance and the bankrupt cryptocurrency hedge fund Three Arrows Capital (3AC), and that its parent company DCG had taken on some of Genesis' debts in order to keep the company afloat. On August 17, 2022, Genesis CEO Michael Moro resigned to serve in an advisory position, while Chief Operating Officer (COO) Derar Islim became interim CEO. On November 1, 2022, it was reported that Mark Murphy had been promoted from DCG's COO to president and had dismissed 10% of the DCG staff. On November 16, Genesis abruptly halted all Bitcoin withdrawals and loan applications for their customers, following FTX's bankruptcy filing. The next morning, "Wall Street Journal" reported that it had obtained confidential documents stating that Genesis had an "ongoing run on deposits".
On January 19, 2023, Genesis Global Capital filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. with the unit continuing to undergo proceedings through 2023.
Grayscale Investments.
Established in 2013, Grayscale Investments is a digital currency asset manager. It offers funds privately for institutional and accredited investors and publicly traded products.
Grayscale was the world's largest asset manager for digital currency, as of December 2021, with more than $50 billion in assets under management. Grayscale also manages the Grayscale Bitcoin Investment Trust (OTCQX: GBTC), which was the first publicly quoted security solely invested in the price of bitcoin upon its launch in 2013.
As of April 2021, six of Grayscale's funds were traded publicly on the OTCQX market: Bitcoin Cash, Grayscale Bitcoin Trust, Grayscale Ethereum Trust, Grayscale Ethereum Classic Trust, Grayscale Digital Large Cap Fund, and the Grayscale Litecoin Trust.
Grayscale Bitcoin Trust was approved for public trading by the U.S. Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) in 2015. On January 21, 2020, Grayscale Bitcoin Trust became the first digital currency financial product to become a Securities and Exchange Commission reporting company.
In 2018, Grayscale launched the Grayscale Digital Large Cap Fund which allows a customer to invest in a group of prominent digital currencies. The fund was approved to trade on public markets by the FINRA in October 2019. In May 2022, it was reported that Grayscale would list an exchange-traded fund (ETF) for the first time in Europe. The ETF was said to be made up of companies representing the "Future of Finance", and would begin trading on May 17.
"CoinDesk".
"CoinDesk" is a global media, research, and events platform that was acquired by Digital Currency Group in 2016. It reports on bitcoin blockchain daily news, provides a bitcoin price index and publishes a quarterly "State of Bitcoin" report. CoinDesk also hosts a conference on digital currencies and blockchain technologies named "Consensus".
Foundry.
Foundry, established in 2019, sets up and manages bitcoin mining operations in the United States and Canada. In addition to setting up and operating its own cryptocurrency mining equipment, Foundry also provides financing, specialized digital mining equipment, and expertise to other digital currency startups.
In the summer of 2021, Foundry helped to relocate over $300 million worth of equipment from China to North America following the Chinese government shutdown of many cryptocurrency mining operations.
"Bloomberg" reported in April 2023 that Foundry would stop offering free Bitcoin mining services, and between April 19 and April 22, would instead levy a pool fee on members. The services had been free since 2019.
Luno.
Cryptocurrency startup Luno (formally BitX) was founded in 2013 by four South Africans, Marcus Swanepoel, a former investment banker and Timothy Stranex, a Google software engineer, Carel van Wyk and Pieter Heyns. In 2015 BitX received a 3 or 4 million dollar investment injection by the Naspers Group. In September 2020, Digital Currency Group acquired Luno, a cryptocurrency exchange based in London. At the time of the acquisition, Luno had more than 5 million customers.
References.
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