Barry Silbert’s Digital Currency Group is Building the Largest Investment Portfolio in Bitcoin

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Barry Silbert’s Digital Currency Group is Building the Largest Investment Portfolio in Bitcoin

By Diana Ngo - min read
Updated 22 May 2020

Digital Currency Group (DCG), a holding company focused on investing and developing bitcoin and blockchain businesses, has raised its first round of funding with participation of some of the biggest American financial firms. Founder and CEO Barry Silbert said he intends to build “the largest early-stage investment portfolio in the digital currency and blockchain ecosystem.”

Speaking at Money 20/20, Silbert said that the company has closed a round from Bain Capital Ventures, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC), CME Ventures, FirstMark Capital, MasterCard, New York Life, Novel TMT, Oak HC/FT, RRE Ventures, Solon Mack Capital, and Transamerica Ventures.

Silbert said in a statement:

“I wanted to work with firms who have a long-term perspective, and were willing to explore with us and invest not only money, but real organizational and intellectual capital into building businesses and partnerships that will enable us to unleash value in new, unprecedented ways.”

Founded this year, DCG was formed with the merger of two SecondMarket Solutions companies, Genesis Global Trading, a bitcoin over-the-counter trading firm, and Grayscale Investments, a digital currency asset management firm that manages the Bitcoin Investment Trust (GBTC).

DCG builds, incubates and seeds bitcoins and blockchain-related companies. Its portfolio includes 57 seed-stage investments across 18 different countries, including Chain, Circle, Coinbase, itBit, Ripple, Xapo and more recently Ascribe and ShoCard.

“We’re also going to start high-growth businesses of our own, and develop a global platform and network to support our companies,” Silbert said.

Silbert further indicated that the firm plans to make between 10 and 20 new investments next year along with launching the btc2016 conference, a bitcoin-focused event that will take place in New York in May 2016.

 

Money 20/20 2015

Big announcements were made this week at Money 20/20 2015, one of the most important global events for financial innovation.

Notably, Mexican bitcoin exchange meXBT, unveiled a new payment platform for emerging economies that will facilitate international payments between Latin America and Asia, reported Finextra.

The new platform, powered by technology developed by New York-based AlphaPoint, is called Pay.MEXBT and leverages the bitcoin blockchain to allow payments in fiat currency from one country to another in a matter of minutes.

“We are looking to speed up payment processes and remove the risk and delay often involved in FX conversion – for example, you can pay in MXN and your counterpart will receives the equivalent in CNY in real-time,” Joel Cano, COO of meXBT, said.

On Tuesday, Nasdaq CEO Robert Greifeld, conducted the first-ever demonstration of Linq, a new blockchain-powered trading platform for managing shares of private companies, reported Forbes.

Money 20/20 2015, Las Vega - Source: Twitter
Money 20/20 2015, Las Vegas – Source: Twitter

Greifeld said that the first participants will include Chain, Vera, Tango and ChangeTip.

“We are extremely encouraged by the initial demand for Nasdaq Linq from these innovative, first-mover companies, and the validation it represents of our application of blockchain technology,” he said.

“Blockchain applied to the private market is innovation built on top of innovation, and carries with it the opportunity to forever alter the future of financial services infrastructure.”

Meanwhile, BTCC, formerly BTC China, announced Pro Exchange, a bitcoin margin trading tool that will allow traders to exercise 20x leverage on spot trading, reported Bitcoin Magazine.

 

Cover image credit: Barry Silbert, Flickr