Digital Currency Group

Basics

• Founded in:
• Mainnet release:
• Based in: has their offices in Manhattan.
• A company helping to build the foundation of the digital currency and blockchain technology industry by working as an active seed investor in the digital currency industry, with over 50 investments in 15 countries including BitGo, BitPay, BitPagos, BitPesa, Chain, Circle, Coinbase, Gyft, Kraken, Ripple Labs, TradeBlock, Unocoin, and Xapo.
• Has a multitude of high-profile ties between the US Government and BitFury

Projects

CoinDesk

• Owns 90% of CoinDesk. Svold it to Bullish (20-11-2023).

Foundry

• From CoinDesk (27-8-2020):

"Foundry provides cryptocurrency miners and equipment makers with "institutional expertise, capital, and market intelligence," DCG said. It's also "one of the largest bitcoin miners in North America," per the announcement, and has provided "tens of millions of dollars" in financing to other mining operations.

A DCG representative told CoinDesk that capital would primarily comprise equipment finance loans, but Foundry may also make investments given "the right opportunity. TDCG said it plans to invest more than $100 million into Foundry through 2021, as well as bring miners and manufacturers access to its network of companies.

Foundry has been working in North America with China-based bitcoin miner manufacturer MicroBT over the last year, COO Jordan Chen said in the announcement."

• From Blockthreat (14-9-2022):

"Foundry patched a remote code execution vulnerability in forge thanks to a responsible disclosure by elyx0.eth."

• Mike Colyer, previously a Core Scientific senior vice president, has been Foundry’s CEO since last October, according to his LinkedIn profile.

HQ

• It's $3.5B Wealth Management division, HQ, got tossed to the curb along with 60 employees in the firm’s most recent round of cuts (1-2023).

Grayscale

• Grayscale has 17 crypto ETFs and is one of the largest holders of Bitcoin (own ~$11b worth) as of 11-2022. There is some data (24-7-2022) that hints towards DCG and 3AC having been involved in some kind of scheme to extract value from the GBTC premium. This provided massive leverage for 3AC which they encashed and used to fund a wide range of things. It also generated a lot of short-term profits for DCG via fees. But 3AC was wildly leveraged and they appear to have gone insolvent over the Terra-Luna weekend.

Luno

• From CoinDesk (9-9-2020):

"has acquired Luno, a retail-focused cryptocurrency exchange with over 5 million customers spanning over 40 countries. Luno will continue to operate as an independent, wholly owned subsidiary of DCG, the companies said. The financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed in an announcement Wednesday."

Investments

• From this article (25-12-2022):

"Genesis Global Capital, a key arm of DCG, owes at least $1.8 billion to creditors, including $900 million to Gemini Earn users, according to a Reuters report. Genesis had a $1.1 billion liability from a loan made to now-defunct hedge fund 3AC, which parent DCG absorbed. Additionally, DCG owes $575 million to Genesis due by May 2023, and $350 million to investment firm Elridge in case Genesis collapses, as per a Financial Times report.

DCG has around 200 investments in crypto firms and tokens, including crypto news portal CoinDesk, bitcoin mining firm Foundry, and Grayscale Investments. According to Forbes estimates, DCG’s outstanding liabilities outweigh the fair market value of its assets. Therefore, Forbes’ estimates place the value of Silbert’s 40% stake in DCG at zero."

• From The Block (8-3-2021):

"In total, the firm’s portfolio consists of at least 165 startups and protocols across twenty-three verticals."

• DCG has invested in: Yours, Blockstream and BTCC. Bitgo, Coindesk, Circle, Xapo, Purse.io, BitPay, Coinhouse and Ripple.
• Has been known to invest big in stablecoins.
• Acala's aUSD Ecosystem Fund; one of the founding funds to grow the Acala stablecoin (23-3-2022)
• Bitclout; it's founder has mentioned this fund as an investor (23-3-2021).
• Blockstack. As of 8-2019 still invested in Blockstack (it had participated in a Series A in 2017)
• Civic. Invested in Civic
• Coin Center; a sponsor of it.
• Coindesk. DCG owns 90%of Coindesk.
• Coin Metrics. From CoinDesk (26-3-2020): Participated in $6M Series A Funding Round for Coin Metrics.
• Dapper Labs. According to a story in Forbes Thursday (12-9-2019), Dapper Labs has garnered $11 million in funding for the project, including investment from Warner. The round is led by Andreessen Horowitz, with other major venture firms like Union Square Ventures, Digital Currency Group, Venrock and Accomplice also participating.
• Dune Analytics; Dune mentions them as one of their backers (22-3-2021).
• ETC. Is partly funding ETC development through ETC Cooperative and ETCLabs
• Genesis Global Trading is theirs.
• The Graph. It is one of its backers according to the website of The Graph (2-10-2020).
• Grayscale Investments is theirs.
• Horizen Labs initially aimed to raise $2M in seed funding, but overshot its goal and received $4M from Digital Currency Group
• Ledger; part of a $380M Series C funding round for the hardware wallet (10-6-2021)
• Livepeer; participated in their $20M Series B (7-2021).
• Money Button, funds it.
• Took part in the $5M Series A of Octopus Network (4-9-2021).
• OP Crypto Capital Management; (Huobi's Metaverse fund), joined in the launch of it's $25M fund (6-9-2021).
• Protocol Labs, on of its investors (11-12-2020).
• Railgun; bought 5M RAIL for $7M (26-1-2022) with a 2 year lockup.
• Rootstok. Partnered with Rootstok. 
• Shima Capital; they got some of their seed money for their first $200M fund from here (17-8-2022).
• Three Arrows Capital; DCG turned out to be the biggest loaner of money to 3AC after the firm filled for bankruptcy (17-7-2022).
• trueDigital. Partnered with. 
• Zabo. Participated (5-3-2020) in a funding round of $2.5M for Zabo.
• Zerion; part of a $8.2 raise (7-7-2021).
• Circle; was one of the investors in the $440M fundraise for Circle (28-5-2021).
• Worldcoin; one of the many VCs who participated in this controversial project (24-10-2021).

Team, Funding, Partners

• Andresen, Gavin; board member
• Silbert, Barry; founder
• Meltem Demirors; served as Vice President of Development

Board of Digital Currency Group:

• Glenn Hutchins;
  • Economic advisor to Bill Clinton
  • Board member of NASDAQ OMX
  • Board member of Federal Reserve Bank of New York
  • Chairman of Silver Lake Partners
  • Wikileaks: http://www.breitbart.com/2016-presidential-race/2016/10/14/wikileaks-investor-conspired-with-clinton-campaign-to-ambush-trump-live-on-cnbc/
  • “Private equity investor and former Bill Clinton advisor Glenn Hutchins conspired with Hillary Clinton campaign manager John Podesta and Center for American Progress president Neera Tanden to ambush GOP nominee Donald Trump during a live television interview, leaked emails reveal.” http://archive.fo/sNj92
  • A Chairman at World Economic Forum

Glenn Hutchins is chairman of North Island and a co-founder of Silver Lake, the global leader in technology investing. He is a director of both AT&T and NASDAQ OMX; a director of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York; vice chairman of both the Brookings Institution and the Economic Club of New York; and a member of the Executive Committee of the New York Presbyterian Hospital. He is an owner and member of the Executive Committee of the Boston Celtics basketball team. Mr. Hutchins is a director of the Harvard Management Company, which is responsible for the Harvard University endowment, and co-chairman of the University’s capital campaign. He is also a board member of the Center for American Progress as well as a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Previously, Mr. Hutchins served President Clinton in both the transition and the White House as a special advisor on economic and health-care policy. He was also previously chairman of the board of SunGard Data Systems, Inc. and Instinet, Inc. Mr. Hutchins and his wife, Debbie, founded the Hutchins Family Foundation which, among other projects, has created the Hutchins Center for African and African-American Research at Harvard University, which is chaired by Mr. Hutchins; the Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy at The Brookings Institution; and the Chronic Fatigue Initiative, which conducts basic research into the cause of chronic fatigue syndrome.

Advisory Board:

Larry Summers

• Born in New Haven, Connecticut, Summers became a professor of economics at Harvard University in 1983. He left Harvard in 1991, working as the Chief Economist at the World Bank from 1991 to 1993. In 1993, Summers was appointed Undersecretary for International Affairs of the United States Department of the Treasury under the Clinton Administration. In 1995, he was promoted to Deputy Secretary of the Treasury under his long-time political mentor Robert Rubin. In 1999, he succeeded Rubin as Secretary of the Treasury. While working for the Clinton administration Summers played a leading role in the American response to the 1994 economic crisis in Mexico, the 1997 Asian financial crisis, and the Russian financial crisis. He was also influential in the American advised privatization of the economies of the post-Soviet states, and in the deregulation of the U.S financial system, including the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act.
• Following the end of Clinton's term, Summers served as the 27th President of Harvard University from 2001 to 2006. Summers resigned as Harvard's president in the wake of a no-confidence vote by Harvard faculty, which resulted in large part from Summers's conflict with Cornel West, financial conflict of interest questions regarding his relationship with Andrei Shleifer, and a 2005 speech in which he suggested that the under-representation of women in science and engineering could be due to a "different availability of aptitude at the high end," and less to patterns of discrimination and socialization.
• After his departure from Harvard, Summers worked as a managing partner at the hedge fund D. E. Shaw & Co., and as a freelance speaker at other financial institutions, including Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Merrill Lynch and Lehman Brothers. Summers rejoined public service during the Obama administration, serving as the Director of the White House United States National Economic Council for President Barack Obama from January 2009 until November 2010, where he emerged as a key economic decision-maker in the Obama administration's response to the Great Recession. After his departure from the NEC in December 2010, Summers has worked in the private sector and as a columnist in major newspapers. In mid-2013, his name was widely floated as the potential successor to Ben Bernanke as the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, though after pushback from the left, Obama eventually nominated Federal Reserve Vice-Chairwoman Janet Yellen for the position.

Funding

• Bain Capital Group
• Mastercard
• CIBC
• FirstMark Capital
• New York Life
• Novel TMT Ventures
• Oak HC/FT
• RRE Ventures
• Solon Mack Capital
• The Whittemore Collection
• Transamerica Group
• OMERS Ventures
• HCM International Co
• Prudential Financial
• Western Union

Partners

• Mentioned as a partner on the website of Acala (6-9-2020).
• API3; is mentioned as a partner on their website (5-3-2021).