As the head of Digital Currency Group, Barry Silbert is one of the most influential people in the crypto space. Given how crowded the industry is, that’s a massive achievement. His parent company owns five cryptocurrency-focused subsidiaries such as CoinDesk and Grayscale Investments.
Silbert made his fortune by investing early in Bitcoin and starting crypto-related companies. As of 2023, Barry Silbert has a net worth of $2 billion. Over the last 12 months, his net worth has fallen by over a billion dollars due to the markets selling off sharply.
Early Life
Barry Silbert was born in 1976 in Gaithersburg, Maryland. As a kid, his first business venture was selling baseball cards. While still in high school, he completed the Series 7 exam and became a stockbroker.
Silbert set a record by becoming the youngest person to do so. The smart youngster also got a BBA in Finance from Emory University’s Goizueta Business School in 1998.
Rise to Prominence
After college, Silbert landed his first job at Houlihan Lokey as an associate. He worked there from 1998 until 2004. After leaving, he founded SecondMarket.
Around this time, he became the CEO of Restricted Stock Partners and held the position from 2004 to 2008. He first started buying Bitcoin in 2012, well before the cryptocurrency became mainstream.
With a $2 million budget, Silbert founded the investment vehicle Bitcoin Investment Trust at SecondMarket. It was the first of its kind in the US, and it sparked a lot of new opportunities and made him a household name,
Digital Currency Group
Aside from buying cryptocurrency in its early stages, Silbert built his wealth by investing in crypto-focused companies. He did this by selling SecondMarket to Nasdaq and founding Digital Currency Group (DCG) in 2015.
DCG has over 200 enterprises in its investment portfolio, spread across more than 30 countries. This includes Coinbase, eToro, and Kraken. It also holds Ethereum, Ethereum Classic, and Bitcoin, among other digital tokens.
Currently, Digital Currency Group holds six subsidiaries. This includes Genesis Trading, TradeBlock, Foundry Services, Luno Global, CoinDesk, and perhaps its most successful venture, Grayscale Investments.
Grayscale Investments
Grayscale Investments is the one world’s largest digital currency asset managers and was founded in 2013. It provides corporate and accredited investors with exposure to high-qualities cryptocurrencies. In December 2021, they had $50 billion in assets under management.
The company also runs the Grayscale Bitcoin Investment Trust, the first publicly-traded security that tracks the price of Bitcoin. In recent times, Silbert has tried to convert the trust into an ETF but the SEC has rejected all of their applications.
Net Worth
Silver is classified as a “Bitcoin whale” and has one of the largest Bitcoin holdings in the world as he manages Grayscale, an investment fund that owns around 634,000 Bitcoin and over 3 million Ethereum.
Barry Silbert was named on Fortune’s 40 Under 40 list in 2011. More recently, he was listed as the 9th wealthiest person in crypto by Forbes.com. The crypto billionaire owns a home in the coastal suburban city of Rye, New York. He lives there with his wife Lori Silbert and their son.
