Digital Currency Group

Founder Barry Silbert worked early in his career on restructuring at the investment bank Houlihan Lokey, founded SecondMarket, a platform for trading shares in privately held companies, in 2004, and began investing in bitcoin and bitcoin startups in 2012. DCG was founded in 2015 and is incorporated in Delaware. On October 27, 2015, less than a week after selling SecondMarket to Nasdaq, Silbert announced at the Money 20/20 conference the official launch of DCG and the close of its first funding round, with investors including Bain Capital Ventures, Transamerica Ventures, FirstMark Capital, MasterCard, and New York Life.⁠[1][1][1][2][3][3][3]

DCG was structured as a company rather than a fund; Silbert said this structure, operating with permanent capital and a flexible mandate, would allow it to evolve with the industry. At launch, DCG invested in bitcoin startups while also operating the wholly owned subsidiaries Genesis Global Trading, a bitcoin OTC trading firm, and Grayscale Investments, which managed a publicly traded bitcoin trust (symbol GBTC). As of November 2015, its portfolio included 56 companies in 17 countries, among them Coinbase and Ripple.⁠[3][3][3][1]

On January 13, 2016, DCG acquired CoinDeskCoinDeskCoinDesk is a cryptocurrency media, events, index, and data company founded in 2013 and headquartered in New York. Its businesses include the CoinDesk news website, the annual crypto industry conference Consensus, and the CoinDesk Indices index business. In November 2023, the digital asset exchange Bullish acquired CoinDesk from Digital Currency Group, and CoinDesk has since operated as an independent subsidiary of Bullish.Open the full entry, a cryptocurrency news site in which it had previously invested. The price was not officially announced; a source close to the deal put it at around $500,000–600,000. DCG also announced the dates and location of its Consensus 2016 conference.⁠[4][4][4][4]

On September 9, 2020, DCG acquired Luno, a cryptocurrency exchange founded in South Africa, on undisclosed terms; DCG had first invested in Luno in its 2013 seed round, and Naspers and Rand Merchant Investments sold their stakes to DCG. Luno said at the time that it had five million customers in over 40 countries. At the time of the acquisition, DCG had backed more than 160 blockchain companies, and its wholly owned subsidiaries included the digital asset manager Grayscale Investments, the digital asset prime brokerage Genesis, the media and events company CoinDesk, and the newly launched Foundry, which provides financing and market intelligence to bitcoin miners and mining equipment manufacturers.⁠[5][5][5][5][5][5][5]

On November 1, 2021, DCG announced a $700 million investment through the sale of its own shares, valuing the company at $10 billion. SoftBank led through its Vision Fund 2 and its Latin America Fund, joined by Singapore’s GIC and Alphabet’s CapitalG; the structure allowed early investors to exit. Silbert said at the time that a public listing was not only not in the works but was not even being discussed.⁠[6][6][6][6]

Through Genesis Global Holdco, DCG wholly owned Genesis Global Capital, a crypto lender formed in 2017. In 2021 and 2022, Genesis Global Capital ran a crypto asset lending program for retail investors, commingling the crypto assets investors tendered and lending them to institutional borrowers such as hedge funds. On June 13, 2022, one of its largest borrowers, the crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital, failed to meet a margin call and defaulted on about $2.4 billion in loans; by June 16 the mark-to-market shortfall had reached $1 billion. On June 30, DCG executed a $1.1 billion promissory note to Genesis Global Capital with a 10-year term and 1% annual interest, non-callable and requiring no payments until 2032 other than recoveries from the Three Arrows liquidation; Genesis booked it as an asset, allowing its balance sheet that day to show positive equity.⁠[2][2][2][2][2][2][2][2][2]

A 2025 SEC order found that Genesis tweeted on June 15, 2022, that its balance sheet was strong, which DCG executives retweeted; on July 6, Genesis tweeted that DCG had assumed certain of its liabilities related to Three Arrows to ensure it had adequate capital to operate, when in fact DCG had not transferred any capital to it, and the terms of the note were not disclosed to Genesis investors through the summer of 2022.⁠[2][2][2][2]

In November 2022, facing a wave of redemption requests it could not satisfy, Genesis Global Capital suspended withdrawals, and in January 2023 it filed for bankruptcy. That same month, investors brought a securities class action against DCG and Silbert, alleging that they caused Genesis to offer unregistered securities and misrepresent its financial condition.⁠[2][7]

On October 19, 2023, New York Attorney General Letitia James sued Gemini Trust Company, Genesis and its affiliates, and DCG, alleging that they defrauded more than 230,000 investors, including at least 29,000 New Yorkers, of more than $1 billion through Gemini Earn, a program run by Gemini in partnership with Genesis; the complaint also charged Genesis, its former CEO Soichiro Moro, DCG, and Silbert with trying to conceal more than $1.1 billion in losses. The Attorney General sought to ban the companies from the financial investment industry in New York and sought restitution for investors and disgorgement of ill-gotten gains.⁠[8][8][8][8][8]

On November 20, 2023, Bullish, a cryptocurrency exchange run by former New York Stock Exchange President Tom Farley, bought 100% of CoinDesk from DCG in an all-cash deal on undisclosed financial terms; CoinDesk thereafter operated as an independent subsidiary of Bullish.⁠[9][9][9]

On February 9, 2024, the New York Attorney General filed an amended complaint expanding the charges against DCG, Silbert, and Moro to cover an additional $2 billion in losses, bringing the total alleged to more than $3 billion involving more than 230,000 investors. The Attorney General alleged that after Genesis lost more than $1.1 billion in loan defaults, DCG and Genesis concealed the losses with a 10-year, $1.1 billion promissory note at only 1% interest.⁠[10][10][10][10][10]

In May 2024, the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York confirmed Genesis’s plan of reorganization and approved Genesis’s settlement with the New York Attorney General: if creditors were not made whole based on then-current digital asset values, a victims’ fund would receive up to $2 billion from Genesis’s remaining assets; Genesis was banned from operating in New York and neither admitted nor denied the allegations, while the suit continued against DCG and the other remaining defendants. At the confirmation hearing, DCG objected to the plan, arguing that post-petition appreciation in crypto assets should go to it as shareholder, but the court did not side with it. The plan took effect on August 2, 2024, when Genesis distributed approximately $4 billion in digital assets and U.S. dollars to creditors.⁠[11][12][12][12][12][11][11]

On November 28, 2024, DCG made its first investment in Yuma, which is also headquartered in Stamford and supports projects on the Bittensor network.⁠[13]

On January 17, 2025, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission announced that DCG and Soichiro Moro, former CEO of Genesis Global Capital, had settled charges of misleading investors and concealing Genesis’s financial condition, agreeing to pay a combined $38.5 million in civil penalties. The SEC found that DCG had acted at least negligently, downplaying the impact of the approximately $1 billion default loss and exaggerating its own help to Genesis, in violation of Section 17(a)(3) of the Securities Act of 1933. Without admitting or denying the findings, DCG and Moro agreed to a cease-and-desist order and to pay $38 million and $500,000, respectively.⁠[14][14][14][2][14]

On April 11, 2025, Judge Crane, the New York State judge hearing the Attorney General’s suit, ruled that most of the claims against DCG, Silbert, and Moro could proceed, finding that the Attorney General had adequately alleged at the current stage that the Gemini Earn program was a security; the judge dismissed two claims as duplicative, scheme to defraud in the first degree under New York’s Executive Law and conspiracy in the fifth degree. Gemini and Genesis had each previously settled with the Attorney General. A DCG spokesperson called the allegations “a thin web of innuendo, mischaracterizations, and unsupported conclusions,” said the company was encouraged by the judge’s dismissal of the most outrageous claims, and said it would continue to fight the suit.⁠[15][15][15][15][15][15][15][15][15]

In May 2025, the Genesis Litigation Oversight Committee, acting on behalf of the post-reorganization Genesis entities, filed two lawsuits: on May 13 in the Delaware Court of Chancery against Genesis’s former CEO, DCG, Silbert, and others, seeking to recover losses in kind of approximately $2.2 billion in digital assets; and on May 19 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York against DCG, Silbert, and affiliated parties (including Grayscale), seeking to recover approximately $1.2 billion in digital assets and U.S. dollars. The plaintiff alleged that DCG and Silbert operated an insolvent Genesis as DCG’s treasury and transferred funds to insiders in the year before its bankruptcy.⁠[16][7][7][16][7][16][16]

In August 2025, DCG sued Genesis Global Capital and Genesis Asia Pacific in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York, alleging that Genesis had been overpaid under the promissory note because of recoveries from the Three Arrows Capital liquidation and should return the money to DCG. Genesis’s counsel said DCG’s claim was meritless and contradicted the written agreements and DCG’s earlier representations to the bankruptcy court.⁠[17][17][17][17]

After a pre-IPO restructuring in 2025, Grayscale’s operating entity was held by DCG Grayscale Holdco, a wholly owned subsidiary of DCG. Grayscale Investments, Inc. planned an initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange; according to an amended registration statement filed on January 29, 2026, after the offering DCG would hold a majority of the combined voting power through pre-IPO members and remain the controlling shareholder, and Grayscale would be a “controlled company” under NYSE rules. The filing also listed Silbert as Grayscale’s founder and chairman of the board, and cautioned that litigation and investigations involving DCG and Silbert could affect Grayscale’s reputation.⁠[7][7][7][7]

On February 24, 2026, Judge Stefan Underhill of the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut denied DCG’s motion to dismiss a securities class action brought by investors in the Genesis lending program, finding that the plaintiffs had adequately pleaded violations of the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and that the Genesis program constituted a security. In July 2026, the judge allowed DCG, Silbert, and DCG President Mark Murphy to take an interlocutory appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit on whether Genesis Yield was a security.⁠[18][18][18][19][19][19]

DCG describes itself as a long-term investor in and operator of the crypto industry and says its investing began in 2012; as of October 2026, its website listed more than 200 equity investments, more than 50 fund investments, and more than 30 token and digital asset holdings across more than 25 countries.⁠[20][20]

Digital Currency Group: Official website: https://dcg.co/ (opens in a new window).⁠[20]

X: Public account: https://x.com/DCGco (opens in a new window)⁠[20]

LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry: Public profile: https://www.linkedin.com/company/digital-currency-group (opens in a new window)⁠[20]