Lamont: Company’s move will bring hundreds of jobs to Conn.

STAMFORD — Digital Currency Group, a leading company in the cryptocurrency and blockchain-technology sectors that recently opened offices in Stamford, announced Monday plans to create more than 300 jobs in Connecticut in the next five years — the latest of several prominent firms to commit this year to hiring on a large scale, with state financial assistance.

To support the new positions, DCG is building an approximately 90,000square-foot headquarters across the fourth and fifth floors of 290 Harbor Drive, in the Shippan Landing complex. By the end of summer 2022, the company is aiming to open the new offices, which have panoramic views of Stamford and Long Island Sound.

Before deciding on Connecticut, DCG considered keeping its headquarters in Manhattan, while it also looked at locations in the other New York City boroughs, Westchester County and New Jersey.

“It was Connecticut where we were welcomed with open arms by Gov. (Ned) Lamont,” DCG founder and CEO Barry Silbert said Monday in a press conference on the fifth floor of 290 Harbor Drive. “It is here where we found a great home for financial-technology companies with the infrastructure, universities, access to capital and diverse pool of talent needed to build a global business.”

If DCG creates and retains more than 300 fulltime jobs, it can earn a grant “in arrears” of up to approximately $5 million from the state Department of Economic and Community Development.

“This is a state that was one of the most entrepreneurial states in the country, going back a long time,” Lamont said at the press conference. “Then we lost a little bit of our entrepreneurial mojo, and we are