Michael Moro, CEO, Genesis Global Trading & Genesis Capital

The cryptocurrency market continues to exhibit signs of volatility. As such, Genesis Global Trading – an institutional over-the-counter cryptocurrency trading and lending firm – decided to hit the pause button on credit extension amidst the coronavirus-tied market chaos. 

Michael Moro, then CEO of Genesis Global Trading and its sister lending business Genesis Capital, sat down with Frank Chaparro on The Scoop, The Block's podcast, for an episode released in April 2020 as global markets, including crypto, were still reeling from the sharp sell-off triggered by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Both Genesis entities operated as subsidiaries of Digital Currency Group, and Moro traced the firm's lineage back to SecondMarket, the platform founded by Barry Silbert that began facilitating early bitcoin trades around 2013 before evolving into one of the largest over-the-counter desks serving institutional and high-net-worth crypto investors.

On the episode, Moro walked through how OTC spreads had compressed considerably as competition intensified from traditional trading firms like Jump Trading and Jane Street entering the digital asset space, forcing desks like Genesis to differentiate through relationship-driven service rather than purely electronic execution. He also discussed the rapid rise of Genesis Capital's crypto lending arm, launched in 2018, which had grown quickly by serving both speculative traders hedging positions and market makers in need of working capital, while acknowledging the risks of credit mispricing as more lenders entered a still-young market.

Given the timing of the conversation, Moro addressed how the pandemic-driven volatility of March 2020 tested the firm's risk management, noting that Genesis had moved to tighten collateral requirements and pull back on riskier credit extension as prices swung wildly, prioritizing balance-sheet discipline over growth in the short term. He touched on the broader regulatory landscape facing crypto lenders and OTC desks, and how Genesis approached compliance as it scaled into a business handling large volumes of loan originations.

The discussion offered an early, on-the-ground look at how one of crypto's key market-making and lending infrastructure providers was adapting to both a maturing competitive landscape and an unprecedented macro shock, themes that would prove increasingly relevant as digital asset credit markets expanded, and later contracted, over the following two years.