Digital Currency Group Invests In Crypto-Friendly Silvergate Bank

The Digital Currency Group (DCG), a cryptocurrency venture capital firm, has reported they have invested in the Silvergate Capital Corporation, which holds the crypto-friendly Silvergate Bank, in a tweet yesterday, Feb. 26.

The Silvergate Capital Corporation had posted on its site yesterday, without revealing the investors, that they had sold 9.5 mln shares of Silvergate stock through a private placement for around $114 mln. The news post writes about the estimated goals behind the acquisition:

“Proceeds from this placement will support further growth in the Bank’s nationwide fintech deposit initiative and its business banking and residential lending activities.”

Cryptocurrency companies have traditionally had a hard time finding banks to accept them as customers. Over the weekend, the Bangkok Bank terminated the account of the Thai Digital Asset Exchange, and in January of this year, several Indian banks deferred or restricted the accounts of crypto exchanges.

Tether, a digital token backed by fiat currency, also experienced banking problems in 2017 when all international wires to Tether were frozen by Tether’s Taiwanese banks.

DCG also tweeted that it has “huge news” from multi-currency mobile-payments app Circle, which is a DCG portfolio company:

Circle publicized their acquirement of crypto exchange Poloniex yesterday, writing in their press release that they hope to grow Poloniex into a “vigorous multi-sided distributed marketplace.”