Digital Currency Group plans to shut down institutional trading unit TradeBlock – SiliconANGLE

Venture capital conglomerate Digital Currency Group Inc. announced plans to shut down its TradeBlock subsidiary that provides cryptocurrency trading and primary brokerage services for institutional investors.

According to a report dated May 25, BloombergThe closure will officially go into effect on May 31. “Due to the state of the economy in general and the prolonged crypto winter, coupled with the challenging regulatory environment for digital assets in the US, we made the decision to close the institutional trading platform side of the business,” said one. DCG spokesperson told Bloomberg.

TradeBlock was acquired in 2020 by news outlet CoinDesk Inc., also a DCG subsidiary, and became its own standalone business. CoinDesk retained the indexing business and renamed it CoinDesk Indices, which provides crypto asset research and data.

The shutdown comes after DCG found itself in crisis after its subsidiary crypto lender, Genesis Global Trading Inc., began experiencing problems in the wake of the collapse and bankruptcy from FTX Trading Ltd. at the end of 2022, which was the second largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world at the time. In addition, DCG reported losses of about $1.1 billion last year, citing the bankruptcy of the Three Arrows Capital cryptocurrency hedge fund in July and its ripple effects in the crypto markets.

DCG's subsidiary crypto lender Genesis Global Holdco LLC was caught in the meltdown and forced to suspend its lending arm in November and eventually went bankrupt in January.

The collapse of FTX and the bankruptcy of 3AC led to a continued decline in the crypto markets and a prolonged “crypto winter”, causing DCG to to close its wealth management division, HQ, in January. The crypto conglomerate also supposedly explored selling its CoinDesk media division later that same month.

Earlier this month, DCG missed a Debt payment of $630 million to Global Genesis. Both companies are also currently embroiled in legal action after the United States Securities and Exchange Commission accused Genesis Global to trade unregistered securities through its Earn program.

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