Larry Summers quits adviser role at crypto firm DCG amid criticism

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Larry Summers, a Harvard professor and former top financial adviser during the Obama administration, has severed ties with struggling crypto conglomerate Digital Currency Group (DCG).

Summers joined DCG as a senior advisor in 2016, a year after DCG was founded. It is unclear when Summers resigned from his position – through a spokesperson, Summers told Protos that he left DCG several months ago.

However, the former US Treasury Secretary was listed on DCG’s website as a member of the company’s advisory board as recently as November. This information has since been removed from the DCG website.

Summers’ personal website was updated Wednesday, removing any mention of her six-and-a-half-year relationship with DCG from her biography shortly after the professor and DCG were contacted by Protos for this article. A spokesperson for Summers said the DCG professor’s resignation was part of a reduction in commitments, but declined to detail other positions Summers had also recently given up.

A DCG spokesperson did not return a request for comment.

Summers pushed the FTX bear to DCG

Summers has come under fire before for his role at DCG, most recently over his comments on crypto exchange Sam Bankman-Frieds FTX. In mid-November, Summers was widely quoted comparing FTX to Enron in an interview with Bloomberg TV.

Following the interview, influential Washington watchdog group The Revolving Door Project said Summers and Bloomberg should have disclosed the ties between top economists and crypto firms, including DCG. DCG’s own ties to FTX were also not disclosed.

DCG has been under pressure since early November when Genesis Global Capital, a major crypto lender and subsidiary of DCG, halted client withdrawals following the FTX collapse. Genesis, the DCG subsidiary, was a major trading partner of FTX and had up to $175 million of its assets tied up on the now bankrupt crypto exchange when it collapsed. DCG also had a small equity stake in FTX.

Read more: Genesis still inconsistent amid bankruptcy filings

Earlier this week, Gemini co-founder Cameron Winklevoss slammed DCG founding billionaire CEO and billionaire Barry Silbert for engaging in bad faith negotiation tactics with Gemini and other Genesis creditors. . Silbert, in a tweet, said some of the claims in the Gemini founders’ letter were not accurate.

Genesis owes Gemini $900 million. The money comes from Gemini Earn, which until recently offered average investors high-interest savings accounts. The accounts were frozen when Genesis halted customer withdrawals. Gemini said the money from these Earn accounts was sent to Genesis to be loaned out, generating high interest payments for Earns.

Winklevii and Summers go way back

Cameron Winkelvoss and his twin Tyler also have a history with Summers. Summers was president of Harvard University when the brothers had their high-profile battle with Mark Zuckerberg over the founding of Facebook.

An interaction between Summers and the Winklevoss twins, known collectively as the Winklevii, became fodder for a fun scene in The Social Network, a movie that chronicled the founding of Facebook.

Zuckerberg eventually settled with the Winklevoss twins, paying them cash and stock, which at the time of settlement was worth nearly $100 million. Nonetheless, in an interview with Fortune, Summers later said the Winklevoss twins acted like assholes.

Protos has contacted Winklevii and will update this piece if we receive a response.

For more informed news, follow us on Twitter and Google News or listen to our investigative podcast Innovated: Blockchain City.

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