Institutional enthusiasm for investing in cryptocurrencies has surged, and Grayscale Investment has also attracted the attention of many investors. Similarly, Gray’s parent company, Digital Currency Group (DCG), also attracted everyone’s attention. This company was established in 2015 as a diversified group integrating holding and investment. In addition to the creation of Grayscale Investment, it also invested in the well-known overseas media CoinDesk, Europe’s largest crypto asset trading platform Kraken, and a well-known trading platform for compliance Coinbase, Blockstream, eToro, Zcash, Dune Analytics, CoinList and many other well-known projects with Bitcoin core developers.
For a more detailed interpretation of DCG, please refer to “”.
2020 is a year of capital turmoil and tremendous changes in the world landscape, and DCG, a giant in the blockchain industry, is no exception. According to statistics from crunchbase, DCG has made a total of 189 investments since its establishment. Rhythm This article will summarize the projects that DCG will invest in 2020 and try to find its investment logic.
Quit 2 projects and made a lot of profits
Tagomi
Tagomi is an electronic broker for encrypted assets, providing liquidity, low commissions and maximizing customer returns, helping to improve the transparency of other opaque markets.
On March 15, 2018, DCG participated in Tagomi’s $16 million Series A financing. On May 27, 2020, Coinbase acquired Tagomi, and DCG withdrew with a profit. It is rumored that the amount of the acquisition was between US$70 million and US$100 million.
Before being acquired, Tagomi carried out a round of 16 million US dollars in financing and A-II round of 12 million US dollars in financing. It can be estimated that DCG’s return on this investment is between 150% and 250%.
ShoCard
ShoCard is an electronic ID card application that stores personal information in the blockchain, and protects and verifies identity through multi-key public/private key encryption, data hashing, out-of-band data communication, data matching, and two-factor authentication.
DCG participated in ShoCard’s US$1.5 million VC round of financing on July 17, 2015. ShoCard was acquired by Ping Identity, which provides identity management services, on October 7, 2020 (the acquisition amount was not disclosed). Ping Identity was listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2019, and its current market value is US$1.811 billion.
17 projects invested in 2020
According to CB Insights data, DCG has invested in a total of 17 projects in 2020, mainly in the VC round and A round.
Transparent Systems
Transparent Systems is a payment settlement company headquartered in Seattle. Transparent Systems is building a “new and secure encrypted real-time settlement solution” to eliminate transaction costs and frictions related to traditional payment methods. Its decentralized network aims to “eliminate the centralized control of the current financial system and solve the settlement Time limits and transaction fees”.
Zabo
Zabo is a software-as-a-service startup dedicated to connecting financial services companies and customers’ cryptocurrency accounts.
Horizon Blockchain Games
Horizon Blockchain Games is built on Ethereum to build games for decentralized networks.
It is currently developing its digital trading card game SkyWeaver, which is a card trading game based on the spirit of magic, similar to “the Gathering Arena” and “Hearthstone”. The ownership of cards and gameplay are tracked and identified through Ethereum transactions.
Skew
Skew is an encrypted data provider, mainly providing professional data analysis and transaction execution services for the cryptocurrency market (not providing transaction consulting).
Lolli
Lolli is a bitcoin reward shopping application, users can also earn bitcoin while shopping. Currently Nike and Kroger, the second largest integrated retailer in the United States, are its partners.
Avanti Financial Group
Avanti Financial Group is a group that provides banking and financial services in Wyoming, USA. The U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, OCC, allowed National Bank to provide digital asset custody services in mid-July 2020. Avanti Financial Group has been authorized by the “Digital Asset Bank” in Wyoming to become the second “new bank” for digital assets. Avanti Financial Group plans to officially start business in early 2021.
Paradigm
Paradigm is an institution-level platform that helps automate the OTC digital asset transaction process. It can automate the price negotiation and settlement process for OTC OTC traders.
Curv
Curv provides cloud-based institutional-level encrypted asset wallet services to provide customers with wallet operations, security and liquidity. Curv’s services also include the setup, management, and maintenance of blockchain infrastructure, which simplifies the adoption of any digital assets without the need to build or expand IT infrastructure.
The Graph
The Graph, a decentralized query protocol, enables decentralized application developers to use GraphQL (Graph Query Language) to quickly query and retrieve data on the chain from a decentralized network composed of retrieval nodes.
Circle Internet Financial
Circle was founded in 2013 by Jeremy Allaire and Sean Neville in Boston, USA. It is a consumer finance startup that provides digital currency storage and national currency exchange services. It uses technology to support Bitcoin to improve consumer payment methods. In 2015, Circle became the first company in the world to obtain a BitLicense from the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS).
Currently, Circle is valued at RMB 20 billion.
Acala Network
Acala Network was founded by Laminar and Polkawallet, participants and contributors in the Polkadot ecosystem, focusing on helping and managing applications in the DeFi field, especially those that can be used as an open financial infrastructure, such as stable currency and increase fluidity.
Dune Analytics
Dune Analytics is a blockchain analysis platform that can be used to query, extract, and visualize massive amounts of Ethereum data. It is a web-based platform that uses simple SQL queries to query Ethereum data from a pre-populated database (avoiding each script to traverse the data separately and redundant transactions). No need to write a special script, users can simply query the database to extract almost any information on the blockchain.
Jiko
Jiko is a personal bank, its market positioning is to provide users with a safe place to save money, while also providing at least 0.5% of debit transaction cash back.
NIFTEX
NIFTEX is a self-service NFT liquidity solution that supports anyone to split an NFT into several fragmented tokens. Since these tokens are generated in ERC20 format, they can be traded and exchanged on the open market, thereby Unlocked liquidity for the unique NFT.
API3
API3 is a decentralized first-party oracle network managed by API3 DAO, which specifically includes the provision of Web 3.0 decentralized API services, such as the infrastructure required for design and technology development; support for decentralized API services and their profits Continuous operations, such as operation and maintenance and business development.
Fireblocks
Fireblocks is a platform that protects digital assets during transmission, specifically for institutional traders who need to move digital assets without causing operational or security issues. Fireblock simplifies related operations by integrating the trading platform, OTC, counterparty, hot wallet, and custody into one platform.
Slingshot
Slingshot is a decentralized trading platform focusing on aggregation services, renamed from Dex.ag. Slingshot was born in the 2018 hackathon. Current similar solutions include 1inch, ParaSwap, 0x’s Matcha, and the newly launched aggregation transaction service of Ethereum wallet MetaMask.
Through a general interpretation of DCG’s investment projects in 2020, it can be found that DCG’s main investment projects mainly have two attributes: “whether it provides convenience for customers” and “whether it is innovative”.
Aggregated applications and companies that are committed to compliance can bring convenience to users to a certain extent and seize the market, while innovative companies have a small and broad investment profit-loss ratio.
