Bullish Completes Strategic Acquisition to Accelerate CoinDesk’s Global Expansion and Growth of Media, Events and Indices Businesses
Bullish, the fastest growing regulated, institutional digital assets exchange led by Tom Farley, announced today that it has acquired CoinDesk, the integrated media, events and index platform for the future of finance, from Digital Currency Group (DCG). Bullish plans to invest in CoinDesk’s global expansion and the growth of the media, events, and indexing businesses. CoinDesk will continue to be led by Kevin Worth and the existing management team and operate as an independent subsidiary within Bullish. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
“With its acclaimed editorial coverage, premier events and market-leading data and indices, CoinDesk continues to shape the global crypto and blockchain ecosystem,” said Tom Farley, CEO of Bullish. “Bullish will immediately inject capital into several of CoinDesk’s most exciting growth initiatives which will power the launch of new services, events and products. We also want to express our unwavering support for CoinDesk’s commitment to journalistic independence.”
“This last year has been a difficult period for our industry. It has reminded us all that trust is an absolute essential ingredient for the future of digital assets. CoinDesk will continue our proud independent tradition with Matt’s guidance.”
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“We are thrilled to partner with Bullish and begin the next phase of CoinDesk’s growth,” said Kevin Worth, CEO of CoinDesk. “With renewed momentum in the crypto economy as well as investment from Bullish, we look forward to capitalizing on the many opportunities ahead for product development and expansion. I will always be grateful to Barry for taking a risk on CoinDesk and having the faith in me and our team to build a meaningful and everlasting business that will continue to support the future of digital assets.”
“I’m incredibly proud of CoinDesk’s growth and development over the last seven years, having transformed itself from a small blog about bitcoin into an award-winning media and events company and the most trusted information platform for digital assets,” said Barry Silbert, Founder & CEO of Digital Currency Group. “The team has built a multi-faceted global business with tremendous future potential and we look forward to watching them take CoinDesk to the next level in partnership with Bullish.”
Formation of Editorial Committee to Champion Journalistic Independence
CoinDesk also announced that it has appointed Matt Murray, former Editor-in-Chief of The Wall Street Journal, to serve as Chair of its Editorial Committee to ensure journalistic independence.
Murray, who spent five years leading The Wall Street Journal’s 1,300-person newsroom, is a veteran global news leader with 15 years in senior leadership roles.
Worth added, “This last year has been a difficult period for our industry. It has reminded us all that trust is an absolute essential ingredient for the future of digital assets. CoinDesk will continue our proud independent tradition with Matt’s guidance.”
CoinDesk Business Updates and Momentum
CoinDesk Indices (CDI) is the leading provider of digital asset indices since 2014, benchmarking and supporting funds, ETPs, listed derivatives, managed account platforms, DeFi protocols, and infrastructure data needs. Tens of billions of dollars of assets under management reference CDI products. In 2023, CDI introduced the Bitcoin and Ether Trend Indicators, CESR™, and the CoinDesk Ether Total Return Index and expanded its client base in Europe, MENA, APAC, and North America. CDI was recently named “Best Cryptocurrency Index Provider” by ETF Express.
CoinDesk Media provides news and analysis on the price movements, technologies, companies and people shaping the evolution of the bitcoin and digital currency ecosystem. In 2023, CoinDesk journalists won the prestigious Gerald Loeb Award and the George Polk Award for exclusive coverage of FTX’s balance sheet and stories on the subsequent collapse of FTX Founder Sam Bankman Fried’s $32-billion crypto business. CoinDesk’s flagship conference, Consensus, is the most influential festival of the crypto/web3 era and attracted more than 15,000 attendees in 2023, including Fortune 500 CEOs, notable lawmakers, sports and entertainment stars from over 100 countries.
Bullish Business Update
Since its launch in November 2021, Bullish has executed over $300 billion in total trading volume and consistently ranks among the top three global exchanges by spot trading volume for Bitcoin and Ether. In October 2023, Bullish announced that it plans to launch perpetual futures trading on its regulated and compliant exchange in addition to its spot and margin offering.
Bullish has quickly become a top-tier institutional digital assets exchange, known for leveraging its proprietary automated market making (AMM) technology to offer best execution trading, deep liquidity, and tight spreads in the largest digital asset pairs in crypto. Regulated by the Gibraltar Financial Services Commission and audited by Deloitte, Bullish exchange brings the best innovations of AMM technology off-chain to offer a unique, reliable source of liquidity – all within the compliant and regulated framework of a centralized exchange.
Advisors
Lazard acted as the sole financial advisor to DCG and CoinDesk on the transaction and Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP served as legal advisor.
Citi acted as the sole financial advisor to Bullish on the transaction, and Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP served as legal advisor.
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