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CoinDesk, a media company focused on cryptocurrency, is nearing to deal to be sold to an investor group for $125 million, Axios has confirmed. The news was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.
Why it matters: CoinDesk's parent company Digital Currency Group has been hit by the downturn in the crypto industry.
Details: The investor group is led by Matthew Roszak's crypto-focused investment firm Tally Capital and Peter Vessenes of VC firm Capital6.
- DCG will keep a stake in the media, events, data and indexes business. The deal is expected to be finalized in the coming weeks.
- CoinDesk's current management will stay on.
Catch up quick: Founded in 2013, CoinDesk had raised about $2 million in seed funding from investors like Digital Currency Group, 500 Startups and Science Inc. It sold to DCG for $500,000 in 2016, Axios' Kia Kokalitcheva wrote.
- But DCG has been rocked by the crypto crash — dubbed "crypto winter" — of the past year and a half.
- Genesis Global, DCG's crypto lending arm, is going through bankruptcy, while DCG's institutional-trading platform TradeBlock and wealth-management unit HQ have closed down.
- In January, it was reported CoinDesk was considering a sale.
CoinDesk, Digital Currency Group and the investors named did not immediately respond to Axios' request for comment.