Digital Currency Group Partners with Western Union and Former U.S. Treasury Secretary

News and Analysis
29.04.2016

One of bitcoin industry’s leading investment companies Digital Currency Group has announced it raised funds from Western Union, and simultaneously announced it hired Larry Summers, former U.S. Treasury Secretary, and bitcoin developer Gavin Andresen as advisors.

According to DCG’s official blog post, the company has expanded over the course of recent six months, which has justified the need for new solutions. The list of the company’s new investors include Western Union, Beijing-based HCM International Company, as well as several investment companies, managers and funds, including Gibraltar Ventures, OMERS Ventures, Horizon Kinetics, Kingsbridge Wealth Management, and Wood Investment Partners.

DCG’s CEO Barry Silbert stated:

“Over the past six months, we have worked with our investors and other corporate partners to create new models for partnership that create value and opportunity for our portfolio companies, our investors, and the broader corporate ecosystem. Our aim is to help companies learn together and build partnerships that leverage the unique strengths and insights of each stakeholder. We continue to believe that collaboration and partnership between startups, incumbents and the industry will be a winning recipe in helping this new technology achieve its true potential and accelerating the development of a better financial system.”

Apart from attracting new investment, DCG has also announced the company’s new board members hired to practice the company’s vision.

In particular, they are Lawrence Lenihan, fouder of fashion investment company Resonance Companies, professor at New York’s Stern School, and co-founder of venture capital fund FirstMark Capital; Glenn Hutchins, an experienced financial expert, whose expertise covers AT&T, Nasdaq, Federal Reserve Bank of New Yorm, and the Brookings Institute.

Most notably, the company hired Larry Summers, Treasury Secretary at Clinton’s Administration and honorary president of Harvard University. Summers also worked with Barack Obama, and currently works as a professor at Charles Eliot University.

“Digital currencies, blockchain and ‘the internet of value’ will create new platforms for financial inclusion, and Barry and his team at DCG are building an important platform with great potential to help these technologies reach mass adoption,” Summers said.

Another new advisor of the company is Gavin Andresen, known for his long-lasting work on bitcoin’s original protocol along with Bitcoin Core, and his subsequent participation in development of Bitcoin Classic.

According to DCG’s announcement, both advisors will speak at Consensus 2016, a conference in New York scheduled on May 2.

“The DCG family continues to grow, and we are excited to continue supporting and building meaningful businesses in the digital currency and distributed ledger space,” Barry Silbert added.

Digital Currency Group has already invested in 70 different companies around the world, including Ripple, Coinbase and BitPay. Barry Silbert has stated on numerous occasions that he sees bitcoin as a global currency.

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