150 Encryption Enterprises, 3.5 Billion Net worth, How Does "King of Encryption" Barry Silbert Build a Digital Currency Empire?

On Aug. 15, Grayscale Investments had its best week ever for fundraising after announcing its TV ad video, bringing in $217 million in funding. As of August 18, the total asset management scale of Grayscale has reached 6.1 billion US dollars, and the total holdings of Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) has exceeded 400,000 BTC. There is no doubt that Grayscale has become a "giant whale" in the field of cryptocurrency, swallowing an important share of assets in the Bitcoin market. Behind this "giant whale", there is a larger "encryption empire" - the parent company of Grayscale, Digital Currency Group (DCG for short), which controls almost "half of the country" of cryptocurrency. In addition to Grayscale, DCG owns or invests in more than 100 well-known blockchain and bitcoin companies including Coindesk, Gensis, Coinbase, Ripple, Bitpay, Blockstream, etc., covering nearly half of the industry in the encryption market. And the "ruler" of this empire is Barry Silbert (Barry Silbert), known as the "King of Encryption". On February 7, 2020, Forbes released the first cryptocurrency rich list (cryptocurrency net assets), Barry silbert entered the list with a net worth of 400-500 million US dollars. How did "King of Encryption" Barry Silbert build such a grand encryption empire? How to invest all in Bitcoin? How do you view encrypted assets such as Bitcoin? We disassemble these problems one by one. 1. Barry Silbert, the "helm" of the encryption empire, officially created the blockchain venture capital company Digital Currency Group (DCG) in 2015, focusing on investment in the cryptocurrency field. DCG has three well-known subsidiaries, Genesis, Grayscale, and Coindesk. In addition, DCG has invested in more than 150 blockchain and Bitcoin-related companies in more than 30 countries around the world, from trading platforms, cryptocurrency wallets to media, regional Blockchain protocol, DCG's investment covers almost every aspect of the blockchain industry, such as Coindesk, Coinbase, Blockstream, Bitpay, Chainalysis, Zcash, Circle, etc. are all part of DCG's investment landscape. In December, the NFT transaction volume on the Polygon chain exceeded 15 million U.S. dollars, hitting a new high in nearly 7 months, and Trump’s NFT accounted for more than 64%: Jinse Finance reported that according to the latest NFT chain transaction volume data, in December, NFT transactions on the Polygon chain The amount reached 15,436,221.45 US dollars, a record high in nearly 7 months. In addition, in December, the NFT transaction volume on the Polygon chain reached 523,051, with an average single transaction value of approximately $29.51, 55,792 independent buyers and 77,373 independent sellers on the chain. The data shows that Trump NFT created a transaction volume of nearly US$10 million ($9,912,882) on the Polygon chain last month, accounting for more than 64%. [2023/1/1 22:19:29] For establishing a group like DCG, what Barry Silbert really wants is flexibility. His model design for DCG Group followed the precedents of IAC, Softbank and Naspers, integrating holding and investment. DCG's broad business scope is also one of its main advantages. Barry Silbert hopes to start a new business, has the ability to acquire companies, and also has the ability to buy coins, so he can make more investment choices in this industry. At present, DCG has become the largest bitcoin and blockchain investment company, and its business touches almost every corner of the cryptocurrency world. The founder & CEO of Digital Currency Group (DCG) Barry Silbert (second from the right) In Barry Silbert's crypto empire, the most worth mentioning are the three major subsidiaries of DCG: Genesis, Grayscale, Coindesk , because they are the "leaders" in various fields of the cryptocurrency industry. 1) Grayscale - the veritable Bitcoin whale Polygon plans to provide $15 million in incentives for DApps built only on the network: On January 28th, the Ethereum expansion program Polygon announced that its development team will launch in the next 6 months A $15 million campaign to incentivize decentralized applications (dApps) built only on Polygon. The program will support specific liquidity mining (LM) and protocol development efforts, and will reward projects based on on-chain metrics. [2022/1/29 9:20:31] Grayscale is the most well-known fund investment company in 2020. In 2013, Barry Silbert established a specialized bitcoin trust company, Grayscale, which was merged into DCG in 2015, with the purpose of providing investors with compliant investment channels in the form of "trust funds". ▲ Grayscale’s main investment products and their latest performance Source: grayscale.co Grayscale investment company has launched BTC, ETH, BCH, ETC, LTC and other publicly traded trust products, in addition to Grayscale Digital Large Cap Fund (large-cap fund) ). Among them, the Bitcoin Trust Fund (GBTC) accounts for the largest share. In the first quarter of 2020, more than 90% of the funds raised by Grayscale entered the Bitcoin field. As of August 17, Grayscale’s total cryptocurrency asset management scale has reached 6.1 billion US dollars, holding more than 410,000 bitcoins, and more than 90% of the funds come from institutional investors and retirement funds. It has become the world’s largest Crypto asset management agency. 2) Genesis - a compliant trading broker, digital currency over-the-counter trading and lending platform Genesis Global Trading was also established in 2013, and was later incorporated into DCG by Barry Silbert. 58COIN exchange is about to launch 150 times leverage: According to 58COIN official news, its contract trading area is expected to launch 150 times leverage next week, and only supports the bit in the four major contracts (USDT contract, currency standard contract, mixed contract, quarterly contract) Currency category. This is the highest leverage since the contract was launched, and it is also the highest leverage in mainstream exchanges. Official tips, this leverage is suitable for aggressive investors with high risk appetite, please pay attention to risk control when using it. [2020/4/9]Genesis Global Trading obtained the BitLicense issued by the U.S. Department of Financial Services (DFS) in 2018, and became a compliant cryptocurrency OTC broker for institutional funds and market-making Provides convenient over-the-counter trading services to investors in merchants and other entities. Later, Genesis opened a cryptocurrency lending service. As of the end of March 2020, Genesis has lent more than $6 billion worth of cryptocurrency assets. 3) Coindesk—the authoritative blockchain media CoinDesk is almost the first batch of blockchain news portals. It was established in May 2013 and was acquired by DCG for $500,000 in 2016. Up to now, Coindesk has become one of the most authoritative media in the blockchain field. The Bitcoin consensus conference Consensus held by CoinDesk every year has become one of the most influential events in the industry, with annual ticket revenue reaching tens of millions of RMB. Barry Silbert revealed that the advantage of integrating these companies under one investment body is to allow DCG to invest in the entire industry in an all-round way. Barry Silbert also stated that "one day he will lead the company to go public". In addition, it can be seen from the assets held by DCG that Silbert has also bought many mainstream encrypted assets. In addition to Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin Gold, ETC and Zcash, DCG also holds newer currencies such as Blockstack, Civic, Colu, Decentraland, Filecoin, OpenANX and Unikoin Gold. Analysis | If LTC effectively breaks through the pressure zone, the next target is bullish to $150: According to Huobi data, the current price of LTC is $99.34, with a daily increase of nearly 14%. Analyst Potter said: LTC today is stimulated by the halving. 88 US dollars straight up to a maximum of nearly 100 US dollars, the range rose as high as 14%. From the perspective of the disk, LTC has formed a large arc bottom and a small arc bottom from June 2018 to the present for nearly a year. In the past few days, under the influence of BTC's continuous correction, the currency price has fallen many times The small pin reached $84 and was quickly withdrawn. There is a certain amount of bull support here. After many times, the price of the currency ushered in a rebound under the stimulus of the news. The long-term neckline position of the arc bottom, the neckline position is a long-term accumulated pressure and support position, so when the main force accumulates a large amount of money to attack, it must face the selling pressure of a large number of profit-making orders above. The current upper pressure range is 100 The US dollar is close to US$110. Only by breaking through this range with heavy volume in the future can the room for further growth be further expanded, support at 90, and strong pressure at 110. [2019/5/24] He not only bought cryptocurrency, but also bought shares in cryptocurrency companies. He also owns dozens of hundreds of cryptocurrency companies. The title-ethexc of "King of Encryption" is well-deserved for Barry Silbert. Looking at Barry Silbert's life experience, most of his life and work are dealing with the financial and encryption industries. These experiences paved the way for him to become the "master" of the encryption empire. After graduating from business school in 1998, Barry Silbert joined Houlihan Lokey, an investment bank in New York, and in five years, Barry Silbert accumulated rich investment experience and network resources. After resigning from the investment bank, Barry Silbert started a long journey of entrepreneurship. In 2005, Barry Silbert founded SecondMarket, a private equity trading platform, to match the purchase and sale of shares of unlisted companies that are difficult to trade. Later, it evolved into a transaction that matched the employee shares of private technology companies and the shares held by early investors. SecondMarket was one of the forerunners in the secondary stock market of technology companies when they were not listed, including the stocks of early technology companies such as Facebook and Twitter before they went public, and SecondMarket was also one of their important trading platforms. Dynamics | B2C2 wins lawsuit against Quoine, which will pay $11.5 million in settlement: According to Singapore's "Business Times" report on March 14, electronic market liquidity provider B2C2 won a lawsuit against Singaporean cryptocurrency exchange Quoine, which USD 11.5 million equivalent to more than 3,000 BTC will be compensated. The dispute, which took place in November last year, is the first cryptocurrency court case in Singapore involving a transaction conducted by B2C2 on the Quoine platform in April 2017. At the time, Quoine was experiencing technical difficulties, resulting in a temporary loss of liquidity. In this case, B2C2’s Bitcoins on Quoine were allowed to be exchanged at an unconventional exchange rate of 10 BTC per 1 ETH, which at the time was worth approximately $12,000. According to court documents, the total amount involved was 3,085 BTC ($11.9 million). The Singaporean judge ruled that Quoine erroneously carried out the exchange transaction without B2C2’s permission, and given that the price of Bitcoin is well above April 2017 levels, the parties must first try to reach an agreement outside of court. Failing that, the court will decide on damages on their behalf. Mike Kayamori, CEO of Quoine, told The Business Times: "We are reviewing the judgment and considering our options, including the possibility of an appeal." Assets were instantly wiped out, and SecondMarket's business was not immune to a huge impact. As the founder, Barry Silbert had to start looking for new alternative investment methods and outlets. Until 2011, Barry Silbert read a book advocating buying gold in the post-financial crisis era - "An Unconventional Guide to Investing in Troubled Time" by Charles Smith. In the same year, a news report about the dark web "Silk Road" and its use of Bitcoin for black market transactions successfully attracted Barry Silbert's attention. The idea of "digital form gold" made Barry Silbert have great enthusiasm for this new thing. Interested in Bitcoin, he began to consider whether Bitcoin could be used as a digital version of gold. Working experience in investment banks, coupled with the early experience of the financial tsunami, Barry Silbert began to develop a deep understanding of the subtle relationship between Bitcoin, banks and even the traditional financial system. At that time, he came to a conclusion: the decentralized currency system may change the world, "Banks can no longer ignore Bitcoin", this sentence has become a sentence that he often talked about in his early years.

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