Bitcoin Baron Barry Silbert Racks Up Enemies as Crypto-Lending Crisis Mounts
Barry Silbert, the founder of Digital Currency Group, is far from crypto's most colorful executive. In an industry rife with billionaire impresarios, die-hard evangelists and outright fraudsters, the 46-year-old chief executive has the look and bearing of a middle manager at a regional bank. His inoffensive demeanor — and relatively long tenure in Bitcoin — served him well as he drew funding from companies like SoftBank and built a sprawling web of businesses that touch virtually every corner of cryptocurrency.
That reach put him at the center of a storm battering crypto lenders like DCG's Genesis Global Capital — with bad loans, runs on deposits and growing mistrust threatening to send the loosely regulated industry into its own version of Wall Street's 2008 credit crisis.
The turmoil has left Silbert locked in an escalating battle with Gemini crypto exchange co-founder Cameron Winklevoss, whose customers have lost access to $900 million of funds that were placed with Genesis. US authorities are said to be investigating DCG's web of internal financial dealings. And Genesis has warned that it may file for bankruptcy if it can't raise needed cash.
Even DCG's Grayscale Bitcoin Trust, the world's largest crypto fund, has been trading at a deep discount to the amount of cryptocurrency it holds, vexing its shareholders.
The struggles mark an about-face for Silbert, a former investment banker who worked on Enron's bankruptcy. His push into crypto left him with a personal fortune once estimated at $3 billion. As the crypto boom gathered force, he aspired to turn DCG into a conglomerate akin to Standard Oil that would dominate the world of digital currencies.
The downturn, however, has caused his net worth to tumble to
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