Crypto media company The Block buys out its investors
16 April 2021
The Block, a cryptocurrency-focused media startup, tells Axios that it has bought out its non-employee shareholders, including its investors and co-founders (who have left the company).
Why it matters: The company says it wants flexibility to better compensate existing and future employees in an increasingly competitive talent market, and to be independent from outside investors and interests.
Details: With a mix of debt and cash from CEO Mike McCaffrey, the company returned to its investors 1.5 times the capital they paid in, plus interest.
- The Block had raised just over $4 million across convertible notes from VCs, including Greycroft, Pantera, BlockTower Capital, and Bloomberg Beta. This does not include the founders' stakes in the company (McCaffrey declined to say how large those were).
- The Block is not yet profitable.
- Roughly 70% of its revenue came from advertising, while the rest was from subscriptions to its paid news content and research products.
The bottom line: The Block used venture capital to get started and finance its early operations.
- "We want to be disentangled from it so we can cover it independently — we have been doing that, but this cements that independence," news director Frank Chaparro tells Axios, adding that the cryptocurrency audience is particularly skeptical when it comes to potential biases and conflicts of interest.
Go deeper: CoinDesk's quietly profitable media business
Transcripts show George Floyd told police "I can't breathe" over 20 times
Section2Newly released transcripts of bodycam footage from the Minneapolis Police Department show that George Floyd told officers he could not breathe more than 20 times in the moments leading up to his death.
Why it matters: Floyd's killing sparked a national wave of Black Lives Matter protests and an ongoing reckoning over systemic racism in the United States. The transcripts "offer one the most thorough and dramatic accounts" before Floyd's death, The New York Times writes.
The state of play: The transcripts were released as former officer Thomas Lane seeks to have the charges that he aided in Floyd's death thrown out in court, per the Times. He is one of four officers who have been charged.
- The filings also include a 60-page transcript of an interview with Lane. He said he "felt maybe that something was going on" when asked if he believed that Floyd was having a medical emergency at the time.
What the transcripts say:
- Floyd told the officers he was claustrophobic as they tried to get him into the squad car.
- The transcripts also show Floyd saying, "Momma, I love you. Tell my kids I love them. I'm dead."
- Former officer Derek Chauvin, who had his knee on Floyd's neck for over eight minutes, told Floyd, "Then stop talking, stop yelling, it takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to talk."
Read the transcripts via DocumentCloud.