Tradeblock, DCG Subsidiary, to Be Shuttered Due to Crypto Winter

cryptonews.com:

Amid an ongoing crypto market downturn, digital asset-focused venture capital firm Digital Currency Group (DCG) has announced it is closing its subsidiary TradeBlock which offers its trading services to institutional investors.

The trading platform is scheduled to be shut down on May 31, Bloomberg reported.

“Due to the state of the broader economy and prolonged crypto winter, along with the challenging regulatory environment for digital assets in the US, we made the decision to sunset the institutional trading platform side of the business,” said a spokesperson for DCG. 

CoinDesk Inc., which is also a DCG offshoot, bought TradeBlock in 2020. The crypto media and events offshoot initially folded the purchased indexing business into its own. The remaining operations were subsequently spun out under the brand of TradeBlock. The financial details of the deal were not revealed.

Meanwhile, a number of crypto industry observers are surprised by the venture capital firm’s move as DCG had previously hinted that it was planning to focus on developing its core business.  

TradeBlock says on its website that its “API-centric end-to-end platform enables institutions to streamline their crypto asset trading workflows with purpose-built pre-trade, trade execution, post-trade, and reporting solutions.”

In the meantime, DCG has been making efforts to sell its bankrupt lending subsidiary Genesis which would allow the business to pay back at least a share of the approximately $3.4 billion it owes its creditors.

In a May 9 statement, DCG said that it “continues to be engaged with the various stakeholders in the Genesis Capital restructuring process pursuant to the 30-day mediation period entered into by all parties on May 1.”

“On a parallel path