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Crypto news site The Block has been sold to venture capital group Foresight Ventures in a $70 million deal.
Foresight Ventures will acquire a 80% share of the company, Axios reported. The Block CEO Larry Cermak said in an X post on Monday that the acquisition would provide the company with more capital to “build out new exciting products” and expand into Asia and the Middle East.
Cermak also announced that he would be remaining as CEO. Foresight CEO Forest Bai will become chairman and partner Tony Cheng will take a seat on the board of directors.
Cheng told Cointelegraph that the deal’s primary focus is to assist Foresight’s companies in attracting more users from Asia.
“We’re observing increased regulatory clarity in this part of the world, along with a notable influx of capital into the region,” he said.
Foresight begun discussing acquisition opportunities with The Block back in April.
Foresight said The Block would continue to operate as an independent business, and has also committed to a minimum, undisclosed advertising expenditure with The Block in the first year of the agreement.
The venture capital group currently holds minority stakes in three other cryptocurrency media entities in Asia: BlockTempo and Foresight News in China, and the Korean-language platform CoinNess.
The Singapore-based Foresight will assume the stake previously owned by Michael McCaffrey, former CEO of The Block. McCaffrey resigned last December amid revelations that he had taken undisclosed loans exceeding $43 million from Sam Bankman-Fried’s Alameda trading company to support The Block and to finance a property in the Bahamas.
On November 2, Bankman-Fried was convicted of seven counts of fraud and conspiracy in New York for diverting billions of dollars in customer deposits to support expenditures by Alameda, resulting in the collapse of FTX, the crypto exchange which he founded in May 2019.
In March, The Block underwent a significant leadership shake-up, resulting in the layoff of 27 employees, approximately one-third of its workforce. As part of this restructuring, Larry Cermak, the website’s former head of research, assumed the role of CEO.
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