Jon Rice

CoinDesk, a leading crypto news and events company and a core component of the Digital Currency Group (DCG) empire, has been an acquisition target for Binance Capital Management (BCM) in recent weeks, according to sources with direct knowledge of the matter.&nbsp;



BCM, registered in the British Virgin Islands, has been exploring ways to buy the company through its CoinMarketCap subsidiary, a Delaware corporation. Those talks are said to be on hold at the moment.



CEO Kevin Worth confirmed that the outlet was for sale in January, although it was widely-known that DCG was shopping CoinDesk after the parent company’s well-documented travails with Genesis and its lending arm, which <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/genesis-in-chapter-11-wont-insulate-silbert-winklevoss-says">sought bankruptcy protection</a> earlier this year.



Worth told CNBC in January that the outlet had received “numerous inbound indications of interest” and that the company had contracted with Lazard, a financial advisory firm, “to explore various options to attract growth capital to the CoinDesk business.”



Early estimates of CoinDesk’s market value ranged as high as $300 million, although the actual acquisition price is expected to be significantly lower, according to another source, who pegged the value of the potential deal at closer to $75 million. Sources for this story were granted anonymity to discuss sensitive information.



Barry Silbert’s DCG acquired the company in 2016, some three years after its launch, for around $500,000. It grew to become a leader in crypto news and events, culminating in the news recently that two of its journalists, Ian Allison and Tracy Wang, had received a prestigious George Polk Award for their financial reporting.



CoinDesk’s story on the Alameda balance sheet that exposed frailties in FTX’s financial position has been widely-acknowledged as the first domino in the collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried’s empire.



One source told Blockworks last month that initial talks between CoinDesk and Binance broke down, as the exchange anticipated a mass exodus of journalists from the news company if it became the majority owner.



A different source explained that Binance had considered an acquisition through a blind trust, but that talks had “moved past” this notion over the last two weeks. However, they said, talks were resuscitated by Binance Capital Management, with the focus on using CoinMarketCap as the acquisition vehicle. Those talks were described by the source as “on the backburner” over the last week, a characterization confirmed by a second source.



According to one source, Binance considers CoinDesk a “significant force for good” in the cryptocurrency industry, but they noted that an investment in the company would be primarily driven by the fear that other investors might not step in to save the news outlet.



They suggested that an acquisition of CoinDesk by Binance itself would have a “fairly minimal” likelihood of completion, due to three factors: It might be a drag on revenue, it could involve significant oversight, and it may require further injections of cash over time.



CoinDesk CEO Kevin Worth told Blockworks &#8220;No decisions have been made about a sale of CoinDesk or other options we are exploring to attract growth capital to the business. This is an ongoing process and there is no set timeline.&#8221;



BCM acquired CoinMarketCap, the world’s most-visited crypto data aggregation website with almost 100 million visits per month according to SimilarWeb, in April 2020. On its website, CoinMarketCap claims that “There is no ownership relationship between CoinMarketCap and Binance.com” and that “CoinMarketCap and Binance are separate entities that maintain a strict policy of independence from one another.”



A source within a Binance subsidiary told Blockworks earlier this year that the exchange was interested in acquiring media properties, but was wary that their neutrality might come into question as a result of the exchange’s potential ownership. This was confirmed by a second source, who suggested that crypto-native publications did not make obvious targets.



Binance previously <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/what-does-binances-investment-in-twitter-mean-for-the-social-networks-future">invested in Twitter</a>, but a proposed $200 million investment in Forbes did not <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbespr/2022/02/10/forbes-announces-200-million-strategic-investment-from-binance/?sh=6542af0d57e2">proceed</a> when the SPAC was canceled.



The crypto media landscape continues to evolve rapidly as the bear market persists. The Block recently <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/the-block-lays-off-27">laid off 27 employees</a> following the disclosure of $27 million in secret loans made by Sam Bankman-Fried to former CEO Mike McCaffrey, who resigned after they became public.



Updated March 13 at 7:33pm ET: Comment added from CoinDesk&#8217;s Kevin Worth.

acquisition

CoinMarketCap Acquisition of CoinDesk ‘On Hold’

Ben Strack

<div id="highlights-block_62347c36f4570" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>A former Federal Reserve Bank of New York employee has joined a lending protocol</li>
 <li>Crypto-focused asset manager Arca went on a hiring spree</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



The gaming and NFT arm of Ethereum scaling platform Polygon has announced a range of hires from some of the largest Web2 companies.&nbsp;



Polygon Studios hired Michael Blank and Young Ko as its chief operating officer and chief financial officer, respectively. Blank joins after working nearly two decades at game developer and publisher Electronic Arts, while Ko spent the past 9 years as the vice president of finance at Penske Media, which includes brands Rolling Stone and Billboard.



Urvit Goel, who most recently helped Amazon launch its cloud gaming business, joins Polygon Studios as vice president of gaming business development. Charnjit Bansi, who was director of product management at Mythical Games, will be vice president of game design.



Ben Watley is Polygon Studio’s new senior director of strategy for gaming, joining from Electronic Arts. He will work alongside Will Matteson, an ex-NASA software engineer and Riot Games strategist, who joins Polygon Studios as corporate strategy manager.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;



The new hires join Polygon Studio’s recently appointed CEO, Ryan Wyatt, who previously headed YouTube’s gaming vertical.



Crypto exchange Bitstamp USA has hired Rika Khurdayan as its chief legal officer, Silvia Lacayo as head of marketing and Michael Levi as head of product and strategy.



Khurdayan joins from New York-based blockchain law practice KSTechLaw, which she founded. Lacayo most recently worked as head of marketing for software company Viable and also held top marketing roles at ZipRecruiter, Chainalysis and Unilever.



Levi was a managing director for nearly a decade at Level One Consulting Group, a firm focused on marketing, sales and business development strategy. He was also recently chief marketing officer for blockchain company Kava Labs, according to his LinkedIn page.&nbsp;



Crypto-focused asset manager Arca named Deborah Djeu its chief compliance officer and deputy general counsel to oversee the firm’s registered and private funds. She joins from crypto exchange Okcoin, where she was head of regulatory and chief compliance officer.



Scott Helfman, who was most recently director of public affairs at Citi, is Arca’s new head of communications. Before his decade-long tenure at Citi, he served in several communications roles at Deutsche Bank.&nbsp;



Annelise Osborne, who is now head of institutional for Arca’s innovation arm, Arca Labs, rounds out the company’s new additions. She had worked in the digital asset space as the chief operating officer of Propellr and spent 12 years at Moody&#8217;s Investor Service running commercial real estate teams within the structured finance group. 



CoinDesk named Alan Campbell as president of data and indices. The company’s flagship product, the CoinDesk Bitcoin Price Index (XBX), has been in operation since 2014.



Campbell was previously head of product management at Bloomberg Indices and also formerly managed Bloomberg Terminal functions and special projects for the company’s CEO.



Brandon Neal, who worked at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York for nearly a decade, has joined Euler Finance. He now serves as the lending protocol’s chief operating officer.



Neal was most recently a Treasury auction directorate at the bank and previously handled governance and strategic planning.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;



In addition to the new hires this week, blockchain infrastructure company announced that it is looking to hire more than 600 new employees following its latest <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/consensys-plans-to-redesign-metamask-and-hire-600-new-employees/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">$450 million fundraising round</a>.



Job postings with titles containing terms such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, blockchain and cryptocurrency grew 395% in the US from 2020 to 2021, according to <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/posts/linkedin-news_theworkshift-economy-labormarket-activity-6887062336839016450-67iT/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">a LinkedIn analysis</a>. This outpaced the broader tech industry, which saw a 98% increase in listings during the same time period.



A Blockworks search on Thursday of US LinkedIn-listed jobs featuring the keyword “crypto” yielded 16,862 results.



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Did you know that Blockworks is hiring too? Check out our available roles on our <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/careers/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Careers page</a>!



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