Digital Currency Group is reportedly selling shares from its most prized crypto funds at a steep discount as the digital asset giant navigates financial woes

• Digital Currency Group is selling some of its top assets at a steep discount, per the Financial Times.  
• The news comes as the crypto conglomerate's lending unit, Genesis, filed for bankruptcy protection last month. 
• The company told Insider that offloading assets "is simply part of our ongoing portfolio rebalancing."

Digital Currency Group is selling shares of its prized investment vehicles to repay its bankrupt lending arm's creditors, according to a Financial Times report.

DCG has started to offload holdings at a steep discount from Grayscale, the parent company's asset management arm, according to US securities filings cited by the FT.

Grayscale has been a vital part of DCG's business over the years, bringing in hundreds of millions in annual fees managing bitcoin and ethereum in trusts that clients can buy shares of. Grayscale operates a bitcoin trust and an ethereum trust charging shareholders 2% and 2.5% in fees a year, respectively.

Shareholders have cumulatively paid roughly $1.2 billion for its bitcoin trust and $387 million for its ether trust since 2017, per Morningstar Research. 

The company sold shares in its ethereum funds, raising around $22 million in multiple trades since January 24. The firm is reportedly selling shares around $8, despite each share's claim to $16 worth of ethereum. 

"This is simply part of our ongoing portfolio rebalancing," DCG told Insider in a statement on Tuesday.

DCG's Genesis lending unit filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last month after a liquidity crisis from its exposure to failed hedge fund Three Arrows Capital and crypto exchange FTX. The SoftBank-backed firm is now trying to repay more than $3 billion to its creditors.