UPDATED 01:27 EDT / APRIL 29 2016

NEWS

Bitcoin & Blockchain incubator Digital Currency Group raises new round from slew of investors

Bitcoin and Blockchain incubator Digital Currency Group, Inc. (DCG) has raised an undisclosed amount of capital in a new round that included Western Union, HCM International Company, Gibraltar Ventures, OMERS Ventures, Horizon Kinetics, Kingsbridge Wealth Management, and Wood Investment Partners.

Under the deal Glen Hutchins, the co-founder of private equity firm Silver Lake Partners and a director of AT&T, Nasdaq and Federal Reserve Bank of New York has joined the DCG board; Lawrence Lenihan, Co-founder and Co-Chief Executive Officer of venture firm Resonance is joining the Board of Directors, while Bitcoin developer Gavin Andresen and former Treasury Secretary Dr. Lawrence Summers are joining DCG as Senior Advisors.

Founded in 2015, DCG builds, incubates and seeds Bitcoin and Blockchain technology-related companies, with a particular focus on service businesses that fill important gaps in existing market infrastructure.

Since its last round in 2015, the company has expanded its investment portfolio to 70 companies spanning 22 countries, including three fully owned companies: Bitcoin brokerage firm Genesis Trading, digital currency asset management firm Grayscale Investments, and Bitcoin publication CoinDesk.

“Our investors now span various segments of the financial industry, from banks to insurance companies to global money transfer and payments companies who see the potential of digital currencies and their many applications,” Founder and Chief Executive Officer Barry Silbert said in a statement. “It also includes manufacturing companies and media companies looking to leverage digital currencies and distributed ledgers to create new efficiencies in their business and build new products and services that make the movement of assets and money around the world instant, frictionless, and truly borderless.”

Going places

The rapid growth of DCG over the last 12 months is likely unprecedented in the Bitcoin and Blockchain space, and their growing number of investments in a diverse portfolio of companies across the full spectrum is highly indicative of a company that is going places.

Its new investors, on top of the slew of investors at its last round, really makes for one of the most interesting and diverse lists of investors you’ll ever see in a private company, not only in the Bitcoin/ Blockchain space but pretty much any market.

Its previous investors (as of the last round, they may have more) include Bain Capital Ventures, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC), CME Ventures, FirstMark Capital, MasterCard, New York Life, Novel TMT, Oak HC/FT, RRE Ventures, Solon Mack Capital, and Transamerica Ventures.

The company did not specifically state what it would use the new funds for but presumably they will be used for further market investments.

Image credit: 105644709@N08/Flickr/CC by 2.0

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