Genesis’ crypto trading arm is moving money around, a sign of normalcy amid its sibling’s bankruptcy
Even as Genesis’ crypto-lending business entered bankruptcy protection, the company’s trading arm, which remained out of Chapter 11, was still moving money around on blockchains — a sign that business was still at least business as usual.
A wallet controlled by the Genesis over-the-counter trading desk sent about $125 million in ether (ETH), phantom (FTM) and tether (USDT) to Coinbase, Binance, Bitstamp and Kraken on Thursday, the day of the bankruptcy filing, according to blockchain- data compiled by Etherscan. In the last few hours, the wallet has traded several times, receiving almost $50 million USD coins (USDC).
The moves align with parent company Digital Currency Group (DCG) lift that Genesis’ trading operations will “continue to conduct business as usual.” (DCG is also CoinDesk’s parent company.) However, it’s still early days, so it remains to be seen how the bankruptcy filing of Genesis’ lending units will affect the spot and derivatives business in the long term.
“The reputation of Genesis is in the trash,” said Charles Storry, head of growth at crypto index platform Phuture, in an interview with CoinDesk. “Maybe they’ll keep some older clients. Maybe. When it comes to introducing new clients, there’s no chance while the bankruptcy is in play.”
Frank Chaparro, a journalist at The Block, posted a Twitter survey asking users if they would do business with Genesis after the lending department’s bankruptcy filing. At press time, 73.7% of the 938 who answered “no” voted.
During the movement of crypto on Thursday, the OTC desk wallet sent 50,000 ETH to Coinbase, 20,000 ETH to Bitstamp and 5,000 ETH to Kraken. It sent another 7.7 million FTM worth about $2.4 million to Binance and 3.9 million USDT to Kraken, according to Etherscan.
This particular wallet typically moves funds on weekdays, Nansen.ai data shows, so Thursday’s transactions initially looked normal amid the bankruptcy drama.
Genesis’ on-chain portfolio, which consists of at least eight unique addresses, has a net worth of $307 million at press time Friday: 74.7% of Genesis’ portfolio is ETH, while the next six tokens – USDC, compound (COMP) , sandkassen (SAND), apecoin (APE), decentraland (MANA) and aave (AAVE) – make up 13.8% of the entire portfolio.
This number is most likely a conservative estimate of Genesis’ total inventory. DarkFi.eth, one of the white hats that stole and then returned approximately $2 million from the Nomad bridge exploit in August 2022, told CoinDesk: “It’s not unusual for venture firms to hide which wallets contain tokens.” Still, Genesis’ known holdings make it the third-largest whale on Nansen’s Funds Leaderboard, after Jump Trading and Paradigm Capital.
Genesis did not return a request for comment by press time.
