DCG’s Barry Silbert Sells $755K Worth of Grayscale Ethereum Classic Trust Shares

By Pedro Solimano

Barry Silbert, the founder and CEO of Digital Currency Group (DCG), has sold some of his Grayscale Ethereum Classic Trust (ETCG) shares, according to a recent SEC filing.

DCG is one of the largest crypto conglomerates on the market and counts Grayscale Investments, the trust’s issuer, as one of its subsidiaries.

According to the filing, Silbert has moved to liquidate nearly 120,000 ETCG shares, worth an aggregate market value of approximately $755,295 dollars. This also appears to be the first time Silbert has sold any of his ETCG shares, according to SEC filings.

The ETCG fund, which launched in 2017, allows investors to gain exposure to Ethereum Classic (ETC) through a brokerage account. ETC and Ethereum (ETH) used to be the same thing until 2016, when developers implemented a hard fork of the network to return millions worth of stolen funds to investors after a hack. The fork was notably backed by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin.

The ETCG sale represents a small portion of the fund’s $225 million assets under management and 14 million outstanding shares—of which Silbert is a 10% shareholder. He’s also listed as one of the fund’s directors.

The sale was brokered by New York-based firm Cannacord Genuity on April 28 on the OTCQX, the highest tier of over-the-counter (OTC) market for trading securities, according to the SEC filing.

Silbert’s shares were originally purchased during two privately negotiated transactions over the 2017-2018 period. So far, he hasn’t made any official comments on the recent transaction.

It’s a somewhat surprising development to see the crypto permabull selling his ETCG shares. Silbert has been in the crosshairs over the past months, due to a $630 million dollar debt DCG-owned lending desk Genesis owes to Gemini, a crypto exchange and custodian owned by the Winklevoss twins.

Earlier this week, the companies announced they had entered into a 30-day mediation process to settle the outstanding loan balance. “If DCG is unable to pay and/or restructure its debt, DCG risks defaulting on its obligations,” Gemini said in a statement.

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