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

On August 15, after Grayscale Investments announced the launch of its TV advertising video, it set a record for the best single-week fundraising performance ever, and received a total of 217 million US dollars in investment. 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. BTC breaks through the $61,500 mark: According to data from Huobi Global, BTC has risen in the short term, breaking through the $61,500 mark, and is now at $61,506.79, with an intraday increase of 3.04%. The market fluctuates greatly, so please do a good job in risk control. [2021/3/14 18:43:23] 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 is the most well-known to investors, and the most eye-catching fund investment company in 2020 is none other than Grayscale. 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". DASH broke through the $150 mark with an intraday increase of 13.92%: data from Huobi Global shows that DASH rose in the short term and broke through the $150 mark. It is now reported at $150.05, with an intraday increase of 13.92%. The market fluctuates greatly, so please do a good job in risk control. [2021/2/11 19:33:49] Grayscale’s main investment products and latest performance Source: grayscale.co Grayscale investment company has launched BTC, ETH, BCH, ETC, LTC and other publicly traded trust products, There is also the 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. 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 investors in institutional funds, market makers and other entities Provide convenient over-the-counter trading services. 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. Dynamics | Bitmain is valued at US$15 billion and ranks 12th in the 2018 China Super Unicorn Enterprises: Recently, Qianzhan Industry Research Institute released the "2018 China Unicorn Enterprise Research Report". The report counts as of December 31, 2018, unicorn companies with external financing and a valuation of more than US$1 billion. A total of 203 Chinese companies are on the list. Among blockchain-related companies, only Bitmain is on the list. With its latest valuation of US$15.00 billion, it ranks 12th among the 2018 Chinese super unicorn companies (valued at more than US$10 billion). [2019/2/28] So far, 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. The annual ticket fee The income is as high as 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. He not only bought cryptocurrency, but also bought shares in cryptocurrency companies, and owns dozens of hundreds of cryptocurrency companies. The title-ethexc of "King of Encryption" is well-deserved for Barry Silbert. 2. Accumulated "energy" Looking at Barry Silbert's life experience, most of his life and work are dealing with finance and the encryption industry. 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. News | The number of Bitcoin ATMs in Argentina will reach 1,500 by the end of 2019: According to NewsBTC, according to representatives of Athena Bitcoin and Odyssey Group, there will be 30 Bitcoin ATMs in Argentina by the end of 2018, and by the end of 2019 Argentina will There are 1,500 Bitcoin ATMs to deal with the severe inflation in the country. [2018/10/4] 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. trade. 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. (The predecessor of Genesis was the trading department of SecondMarket.) In 2008, the financial crisis swept the world. At that time, many traditional financial assets were instantly wiped out, and the business of SecondMarket 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. Spring Labs raises $15 million to build a credit data blockchain: Spring Labs, a blockchain startup aiming to use decentralized technology to restructure the data sharing process in the credit industry, has raised $14.75 million in seed rounds. The round was led by August Capital, with participation from other capital that invests in software and blockchain projects, the company said, according to a statement Tuesday. The investment will be used to continue developing the company’s blockchain platform in the coming months and grow its core development team, the company said. [2018/3/27] Barry Silbert began to have a deep understanding of the delicate relationship between Bitcoin, banks and even the traditional financial system through his work experience in investment banks and the early experience of the financial tsunami. At that time, he came to a conclusion: the decentralized monetary 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. The homepage of DCG's official website still has a huge sentence: "Banks can't ignore Bitcoin anymore" (Banks can't ignore Bitcoin anymore) In 2012, when the price of Bitcoin reached $10, Barry Silbert took out $175,000 of his personal funds He built a position and sold it in batches when the price reached $50. The operation of buying low and selling high made him a big profit from Bitcoin. In 2013, Barry Silbert successfully persuaded the board of directors of SecondMarket to take out 3 million US dollars from the company to buy bitcoin, and use some of the investment positions to incubate a bitcoin investment fund called "Bitcoin Investment Trust", which is inside SecondMarket operate. Since then, Barry Silbert has started to make angel investments in some early cryptocurrency start-ups, including the encrypted trading platform Coinbase, the bitcoin payment tool BitPay, the bitcoin trading agency CoinLab, and Ripple, which focuses on cross-border payments. Soon, the investment market value of the Bitcoin investment fund reached 200 million US dollars. In 2015, Barry Silbert spun off these businesses from the SecondMarket business, merged with his angel investment, and belonged to the newly established digital currency group DCG, and Barry Silbert's "encryption empire" emerged from this. 3. "Believer" of Bitcoin As an early Bitcoin investor and owner of an encryption business, Barry Silbert has become a loyal fan of cryptocurrency, and his views on encrypted assets seem to be very unique. In 2017, he announced that he would no longer hold public stocks, fixed income, bonds, etc., and fully invest in BTC, ETC, Zcash, etc., to avoid the global financial crisis and economic instability.

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