The Digital Currency Group (DCG) has announced the closure of TradeBlock, its institutional trading service, as a result of the prolonged crypto winter and regulatory uncertainty. An emailed message from a DCG representative told CoinDesk that the unit will shut down on May 31, 2023.
The spokesperson noted that the “state of the broader economy and prolonged crypto winter, along with the challenging regulatory environment for digital assets in the U.S.,” had contributed to the decision to end TradeBlock’s services. TradeBlock had been acquired by CoinDesk in 2020 and later spun out as a standalone business, with CoinDesk retaining the index data from the acquisition and rebranding it as CoinDesk Indices.
The move is just one of many DCG has made this year in what has proven to be a challenging market. The company’s CFO left in April, and DCG missed paying $630 million in debt to Genesis Global Holdco in 2021, resulting in a total of 153 bankruptcy filings. Moreover, DCG lost $1.1 billion due to the crypto bear-market in 2022, leaving the conglomerate with only $262 million in cash at the end of the year.
