Cryptocurrency may explain Silicon Valley Community Foundation’s mysterious asset surge

The Silicon Valley Community Foundation, one of the first U.S. charities to accept donations of cryptocurrency, may have held billions of dollars worth of them at the end of last year, when their values were near their peak.

The foundation held $4.5 billion — nearly one-third of its investment portfolio — in one category of assets that appears to be “digital assets,” according to accounting experts who have reviewed the charity’s recently released audited financial statement for 2017.

That would help explain the foundation’s meteoric and mysterious explosion of assets last year. In February, before it was rocked by a workplace misconduct scandal that resulted in the departure of its CEO and top fundraising executive, the foundation disclosed in a press release that its assets last year had swelled to about $13.5 billion. That was up $5.3 billion…