Two days ago, I saw Frank Chaparro, the former head of news at The Block, finally leave the media and go to the trading company GSR, which is quite emotional. In recent years, the overall quality of The Block has declined like a free fall, and some powerful media people have left one after another. It's like a lively party is coming to an end. What about another benchmark, Coindesk? Bullish's IPO filings reveal clues.

Bullish's F1 document talks about how powerful its trading business is, how influential its acquisition of Coindesk is, and how such content and data businesses can synergize with trading businesses. However, the real financial receipts of Coindesk are indeed just words. However, there are some clues:

1- How much did it cost to buy Coindesk? The answer is that the acquisition of Coindesk in November 23 cost $72.57 million, paying for USDC – an all-cash acquisition. At that time, Coindesk had $1.29 million in cash assets, $4.05 million in other assets, and $6.6 million in liabilities, which was theoretically insolvent. However, Bullish is willing to pay it $33.6 million in intangible assets and $40.23 million in goodwill.

2- Is Coindesk a money-making business? It is estimated that Coindesk's contribution to Bullish as a whole is too small, so it does not list specific financial data, but in the corner of the "Management Business Discussion", some information was disclosed, such as: - CoinDesk contributed $27 million to Bullish Group's "subscription and service revenue" in '24 – this includes advertising revenue and revenue from the famous Consensus conference

However, it feels like Coindesk itself cannot make a profit at all. If you don't believe it, Bullish's overall compensation and benefits expenses in 2024 will be $132 million, a significant increase from $90 million in the same period in 2023, and this increase of $42 million in compensation and benefits expenses is "mainly due to the need to fully recognize the employee-related costs involved in the acquisition after the completion of the CoinDesk acquisition". No wonder Coindesk was laid off in '24

3- Does the famous consensus convention make money? - If you only look at simple business data, Consensus is indeed influential. - The 2024 Consensus 2024 in Austin, Texas, has more than 14,500 registrations and more than 200 sponsors; - Expanded the consensus conference to Hong Kong and Toronto in 2025, attracting more than 26,000 registrations.

However, if you look deeper, the situation is not very good. For example, the Hong Kong conference venue was crowded and the income was good, and the F1 watch also specifically said that Hong Kong alone contributed $11 million to the company's revenue. However, the cost is not low, the cost of this Hong Kong conference is 9 million US dollars... (Please take a look at everyone who likes meetings, Pinpin...) ）

4- Coindesk's overall business is quite a headache According to the Bullish F1 table, Coindesk can indeed be counted among the most important media outlets in the entire crypto world: - Coindesk's media services reach an audience of 82.1 million people worldwide (through multiple channels including news, email subscriptions, social media, podcasts, videos, in-person events, research reports, and Consensus)

- In 2024, Coindesk has more than 55 million unique visitors and more than 4.9 million monthly unique visitors. - However, if you look deeper, the situation is not pleasant: In the first quarter of 2025, CoinDesk, total page views fell by 33.6% compared to the same period last year, and the number of monthly unique visitors fell by 55.9%. Seeing this number, even I have a headache...