Cryptocurrency broker Genesis and its parent company, Digital Currency Group (DCG), owe customers of the Winklevoss twins’ crypto exchange Gemini US$900-million, the Financial Times reported at the weekend.
Crypto exchange Gemini is trying to recover the funds after Genesis was wrongfooted by last month’s failure of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX crypto group, the newspaper said, citing people familiar with the matter.
DCG, a venture capital company that owns Genesis Trading and cryptocurrency asset manager Grayscale, owes $575-million to Genesis’s crypto lending arm, DCG CEO Barry Silbert told shareholders last month.
Gemini, which runs a crypto lending product in partnership with Genesis, has now formed a creditors’ committee to recoup the funds from Genesis and its parent DCG, the report added.
Separately, Coindesk on Sunday reported that creditor groups in negotiation with Genesis currently account for $1.8-billion of loans, with that number likely to continue to grow.
A second group of Genesis creditors, with loans also amounting to $900-million, is being represented by law firm Proskauer Rose, CoinDesk said citing a source.
Genesis and Gemini did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Genesis has hired investment bank Moelis & Company to explore options including a potential bankruptcy, the New York Times reported last month, citing three people familiar with the matter.
Read: The stunning collapse of FTX – the inside story
Genesis Global Capital suspended customer redemptions in its lending business last month, citing the sudden failure of crypto exchange FTX.
FTX filed for bankruptcy protection in the US on 11 November in the highest-profile crypto blow-up to date, after traders pulled billions from the platform in three days and rival exchange Binance abandoned a rescue deal. — Shubhendu Deshmukh and Rhea Binoy, with Akriti Sharma, (c) 2022 Reuters