Who owns it, and since when
CoinDesk is not independent and has not been for a long time, so the ownership question comes first.
Bullish, a Cayman Islands exempted company whose shares have traded on the New York Stock Exchange under BLSH since August 2025, bought it. Bullish's prospectus records the transaction exactly: "On November 17, 2023, the Group acquired 100% of CoinDesk, an integrated media, events and index platform from Digital Currency Group ("DCG") for a total consideration of US$72.6 million." Before that date the owner was DCG, which also controls Grayscale.
What Bullish acquired is three businesses under one name. CoinDesk, Inc., a Delaware company, runs the news site and the Consensus conference, which Bullish groups as CoinDesk Insights. CoinDesk Indices, Inc., also Delaware, runs the index business, the source of the CoinDesk 20 and of the index behind Grayscale's CoinDesk Crypto 5 product. CoinDesk Data was enlarged by Bullish's October 2024 purchase of CCData.
Bullish's own annual report states the conflict plainly rather than hiding it: CoinDesk "is our subsidiary and affiliate", CoinDesk "has policies and procedures in place to shield its editorial operations from Bullish's control", and consumers of its content "may not appreciate that CoinDesk's owner has substantial financial interests in digital assets". A reader should hold all three of those at once.
The November 2022 report
CoinDesk published the story that started the run on another company. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission's complaint against Samuel Bankman-Fried records it: "On November 2, 2022, the online digital asset news publication Coindesk.com published an article titled 'Divisions in Sam Bankman-Fried's Crypto Empire Blur on His Trading Titan Alameda's Balance Sheet'", reporting that Alameda held $14.6 billion of assets as of 30 June, much of it in the FTT token issued by FTX. What followed belongs to FTX and is recorded there, not here.
CoinDesk's own site could not be opened for this entry. www.coindesk.com answers automated requests with a security checkpoint page rather than content, so everything above is taken from its owner's filings and from a court document. No mark is shipped with this entry for the same reason.