Would a Genesis Bankruptcy Actually Be Good for Crypto?
Automatic TRANSCRIPT
All right, Friends, we are back with another discussion of 2022 cleanup, although today's news I would argue could be a heck of a lot more bullish than it might seem at first. So of course, one of the biggest outstanding questions after the fall of FTX has been how far the fallout and contagion might go. And fallout there has been. For example, there has been a significant chilling of the relationship between the crypto industry and the Washington D.C. establishment. However, frankly, the main short term thing that people have been worried about is whether the collapse of FTX would cause other crypto institutional failures. In that context, the biggest spotlight has been on genesis and its parent company digital currency group or DCG. I say this every time, but DCG is also the parent group of coin desk. Now, genesis was hit hard in the three arrows capital collapse. They lost about 2.4 billion in loans out to the hedge fund, and ultimately ended up their biggest creditor with a $1.2 billion claim after liquidating collateral. That claim was eventually moved over to the books of DCG, a move which would later complicate DCG other liquidity issues. When FTX went under, genesis announced that they had something like 175 million trapped there, but it seemed there were bigger issues than that. That same week, genesis lending halted withdrawals, which was problematic both for their main customer base, as well as for the users of Gemini urn, which was crypto exchange Gemini's yield feature. Gemini users have about $900 million or so stuck on genesis as we record. And since then, the tension around the situation has done nothing but grow. Over the past few weeks, there has been an ever escalating war of words. Cameron winklevoss the co CEO of Gemini has published two separate open letters around the case. The first being directed to DCG CEO Barry silbert, accusing him of bad faith stall tactics, and asking him to meet with them to find a resolution, and the second being to the DCG board. Basically demanding that silbert be removed from the CEO role.