VGX is the native token of a publicly traded crypto brokerage called Voyager Digital. The company also offers an interest-bearing crypto account that offers additional rewards on holdings, as well as a crypto debit card. Voyager filed for bankruptcy in July 2022.

The current iteration of VGX was released in August 2021 with a total circulating supply of 295 million tokens. Tokens are minted each year – 40 million in the first year, 20 million in the second year and 10 million in the third year. The protocol burns 25% of all VGX used to pay for withdrawal fees on Voyager’s trading app.

The first iteration of VGX, described in further detail below, started in July 2017 at about 4 cents and hit its all-time high of $12.54 in January 2018. By January 2019, the token flatlined, hovering between 1 cent and 5 cents.

In 2021, when crypto had another bull run, VGX hit a high of $6.97 in March. The token was rebranded to VGX 2.0. (but still traded as VGX), and it crashed along with the rest of the crypto in the summer of 2021. It fell back below a dollar in May 2022.

VGX crashed again in July 2022 when Voyager filed for bankruptcy after a major debtor, Three Arrows Capital, went bankrupt. By July 11, VGX had fallen to 17 cents.

VGX is a loyalty token. It entitles holders to earn up to 7% staking rewards, plus rewards of up to 1.5% on other cryptocurrencies held in Voyager’s crypto wallet and cashback rewards on in-app trades or debit card expenditures.

The rewards depend on how many VGX a person holds – the more, the better. All of that takes place in Voyager’s crypto brokerage app.

VGX comes from the Ethos Token, which launched in 2017 on its own blockchain. Voyager acquired Ethos in 2019 and rebranded its token to the Voyager Token in early 2020. Also, in 2020, Voyager bought French crypto exchange LGO.

In August 2021, VGX was rebranded as “VGX 2.0” after it moved the old contract for the token, which traded under the ticker BQX on some exchanges, to the Ethereum blockchain. LGO tokens could also be swapped for VGX tokens.

VGX 2.0 trades as an ERC-20 token under the symbole “VGX.” The new token was shortly followed by the start of the Voyager Loyalty Program, which introduced many of the rewards described above.

Voyager Digital, the company that runs VGX, was founded in 2018 by entrepreneur Steve Ehrlich, who was still its CEO as of July 2022, and Oscar Salazar, a former chief technology officer of Uber who built the prototype for the popular ride-sharing app.

Voyager went public in February 2019 on Canada’s TSX Venture Exchange through a reverse merger. That’s when a private company buys a majority share in a public company. In this case, the shell company was UC Resources, which was a gold and silver mining company.

After the reverse merger, Voyager renamed itself to Voyager Digital (Canada) Ltd. Voyager also trades in the U.S. as Voyager Digital LLC. In December 2021, Voyager started to trade as VOYG on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

In March 2022, securities regulators in New Jersey, Alabama, Oklahoma, Texas, Kentucky, Vermont and Washington cracked down on Voyager’s “Earn Program” accounts, alleging that they constituted unregistered securities.

The legal action included at least one ceaseand-desist order. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission fined BlockFi, which also offered high-interest accounts to U.S. investors, $100 million in February 2022.

Voyager filed for bankruptcy in July 2022 after a $650 million loan to Three Arrows Capital, a crypto trading fund, went bad. Three Arrows Capital went bankrupt after the collapse of LUNA and the associated Terra ecosystem, and could no longer repay the loan.

The bankruptcy filing came despite a $500 million loan in June from Alameda Research, a quantitative trading company started by Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of crypto exchange FTX.