What’s forced CoinDesk to cover its parent company

Isabella Simonetti of The New York Times writes about CoinDesk’s coverage of FTX and founder Sam Bankman-Fried and what that means for CoinDesk’s parent.

Simonetti writes, “But now, the complications for CoinDesk are even greater. One of the businesses owned by its parent company, Digital Currency Group, a venture capital firm with stakes in numerous crypto projects, faces its own financial troubles and questions about its operations. It is part of the broader fallout in the crypto industry since FTX’s collapse.

“This month, Genesis, a cryptocurrency lender owned by DCG, laid off 30 percent of its staff. And on Thursday, federal regulators charged Genesis with offering unregistered securities through a program that promised investors high interest on deposits. The regulators said that Genesis and Gemini Trust, a cryptocurrency exchange, raised billions of dollars of assets from hundreds of thousands of investors without registering the program.

“The developments have forced CoinDesk to cover its owners, publishing numerous articles about related developments in the past couple of weeks.

“‘We cover DCG like any other company, that’s part of our regular coverage,’ Michael Casey, CoinDesk’s chief content officer, wrote in a statement to The New York Times.”

Read more here.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.