YouSaid · the spoken record

Jason Yanowitz

lines on the record: 102
first: 2025-11-05
most recent: 2025-11-05
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“They've been dismissive about digitization broadly. That's been part of the problem, right? So I remember talking to the team in 2021 around that was the first time they kind of thought about stablecoins. But it was part of like, okay, well, we're going to try to digitize. We're going to have a Western Union app. We're going to try to bring everybody into a much better experience because they were starting to lose market share to things like remittle, right? And a lot of these new fintechs, you know, WIS, et cetera. They've just been very bad at that, right? It's been very sleepy. It's been very traditional old school go into, you know, a storefront and, you know.”
2025-11-05 · Forward Guidance · The Next Chapter For Blockworks | Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They're the largest remains operator in the world. They have a 3.95 billion market cap. The stock has gone absolutely crushed. It's trading at four times P ratio. And I started looking at it. They acquired a company that we're looking at called Intermex, which is very one of the second largest operator smaller remense operator in the U.S.-Mexico corridor. And they bought that for 500 million. But it was one of those deeply unsexy businesses that just totally left for dead because the analyst, I don't think the management team is very competent. Like the CEO, if you look at like the transcripts over a couple quarters, he constantly got asked, hey, what do you think about stablecoins? Because Moneygram, probably the second largest remains operator owned by Madison Dearborn partners took him private. Yeah, I think the COs is very dismissive of stablecoins.”
2025-11-05 · Forward Guidance · The Next Chapter For Blockworks | Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“they are mark in two weeks. And so we'll see some price action around that. You've seen a lot of options activity around it as people hedge. But there is this secular trend and maybe the secular trend Matters more than any individual company. And I think you've seen that in AI, right? I think you've seen that and like saw as a service, right, over the last decade. Yeah, like were you better off on the NVIDIA versus like AMD, but like if you.”
2025-11-05 · Forward Guidance · The Next Chapter For Blockworks | Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I haven't done that much work, but I don't know if it would be like a core position. That said, I think one of the main things to think about here, the point you're making, is often around timeframe, right? And when you're investing, you have to think about like what your timeframe is. And there are different types of investment funds or different types of investors. And we've seen a lot of things happen on short time frames that maybe don't happen on long time frames and vice versa. And so listen, the circle stock, you know, it's behaved, I think, incredibly differently than I think any of us expected. And I don't know what it is pre-market today, but just a couple days ago was 240 bucks when it priced at 60, right? And, you know, they had a hard time selling secondary, less than that, you know, before that, a year ago. And so it seems very clear that there is something this dislocation happening. Let's see what happens in the circle soc.”
2025-11-05 · Forward Guidance · The Next Chapter For Blockworks | Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I remember because I was buying it back that day they got hit with like an SEC suit, a bunch of shit. And Paradigm put a position there. I think between 30, 40 bucks. But that's the thing I'm saying Help me understand how you make a fundamental case. Like, if you had a public fund right now, like Liquid Book, would you buy this thing at a billion?”
2025-11-05 · Forward Guidance · The Next Chapter For Blockworks | Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Kind of right accept that circle stock ripped. And why does Circle Stock ripped? It's the only asset in the public markets where you could get long stablecoins securitized is going to be the same thing. It's the only way to get long tokens.”
2025-11-05 · Forward Guidance · The Next Chapter For Blockworks | Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think you hit the nail on the head. Yeah, I think reminds me this reminds me of circle. Like everyone in crypto Twitter being like circle, such a bad business. Like, you know, interest rates are going to come down. Circles are going to get whacked. A bunch of competition.”
2025-11-05 · Forward Guidance · The Next Chapter For Blockworks | Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think a lot of people believe, and I'm one of them, that the tokenized asset space is going to absolutely explode, right? When this goes public, it will be the only avenue for people to express that. Yeah. And so, other than in stable coins, which is kind of a different market. And so there is something to be said about that, which I assume is a big part of the reason that, you know, you see the SPAC deal to get, I think you hit the”
2025-11-05 · Forward Guidance · The Next Chapter For Blockworks | Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, I guess if we want to talk about mid curving things, which we had discussion about last week, and I think I've done before on certain companies, there is a secular tailwind right now behind tokenization.”
2025-11-05 · Forward Guidance · The Next Chapter For Blockworks | Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think that is probably right, right? So the question on transfer agents, right? So if you look at the traditional markets, transfer agents, fund administrators, these are really sleepy traditional businesses. They're very manual. There are a lot of paper pushing. And you're just managing a lot of processes, right? These things do not trade well. So you don't see things that trade at 15 times at a top line, right?”
2025-11-05 · Forward Guidance · The Next Chapter For Blockworks | Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But again, MD Stover is a traditional fund administrator. Like we work with them, I think, in Parify and then we transitioned out a lot, a number of funds, an investor, used him. How real is the technology? Or is it, you know, because candidly, like a lot of it seemed like a rapper, but underneath it, like they're just doing a lot of manual work, which is okay, but.”
2025-11-05 · Forward Guidance · The Next Chapter For Blockworks | Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Largest fundman. All that kind of stuff make the valuation make sense. I mean, I know everyone's hyped up about tokenization. How much money is it actually business making? I looked at it. I hear the meta is strong.”
2025-11-05 · Forward Guidance · The Next Chapter For Blockworks | Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, okay, sorry. So to back up, I mean, securitize is essentially a transfer agent and a fund administrator. So they bought MG Stover, which is the largest fund administrator in crypto. What does that actually mean? It means that they keep the records of who actually owns any tokenized security. They do the tokenization itself. They do the KYC AML. They understand who, when there are transfers, and then they manage all the administration of these, basically these SPVs that they put together, which includes things like payouts and making sure that things like K1s get filed and the appropriate taxes get paid and all that kind of stuff.”
2025-11-05 · Forward Guidance · The Next Chapter For Blockworks | Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A few months before Block Works, I think. Yeah. So they've been doing this for a long time. They've had a really singular vision around what tokenization would look like. To his credit, they were early to this topic that is now, you know, really taking off. They're really finding product market fit. There are, of course, they're the issuer alongside, or at least the transfer agent alongside BlackRock and others.”
2025-11-05 · Forward Guidance · The Next Chapter For Blockworks | Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right, and like this is growth of which we've never seen, right? In any sort of market. And so I try to get as long as much of this stuff as possible, but it's not my, you know, and I'm definitely not buying tokens at all, right? I'm investing in other than, you know, I own Bitcoin and ETH and some large caps, but otherwise I'm getting all my, you know, all exposure basically through the fund.”
2025-11-05 · Forward Guidance · The Next Chapter For Blockworks | Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't think I've ever seen anything like this, right? You know, I think Anthropics is probably going to grow 10x this year again. It's going to grow from 1 billion to 10 billion in top line. I don't think I've ever seen anything like that at that scale, right? I mean, you're seeing the same thing with open AI. Some of these application companies, the cursors, and some of the others, you look at them and they're going, I was talking to one and I'm blanking on the name of the company. Like two weeks ago, and they had gone from basically a million dollars of ARR to $200 million of AR in 13 months.”
2025-11-05 · Forward Guidance · The Next Chapter For Blockworks | Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Probably my single biggest holding that is not my fund ownership in Dragonfly is that I'm long QQQ, right? And so, but I've definitely at times had opportunities to participate in like IPOs. And I would say I hit the button more often than not because I'm just generally long technology and doesn't mean it always works. But, you know, things like, you know, I've seen and been a part of some of these like XAI and open AI SPVs and I mean, I got to tell you on the foundational model side with like open AI and anthropic, the growth.”
2025-11-05 · Forward Guidance · The Next Chapter For Blockworks | Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I tend to be pretty passive, right? So, like, because I get paid by my clients, which is essentially my LPs, to be really deep in a certain asset class and to be really deep with certain types of companies. I spend all day, every day, thinking about those companies, thinking about how to invest in or find edge in, you know, that type of investing. And so it's not really the right ROI on my time to be like digging through like Qs and K's and like figuring out what individual stock that I actually want to. Want to buy. So I'm generally just like long, you know, technology, right? And a relatively passively, I believe in, you know.”
2025-11-05 · Forward Guidance · The Next Chapter For Blockworks | Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Rob, what do you do with your personal book? Like when you see something, like, you know, let's start talking about maybe there's a lot of public market news this week securitize consensus filed for an IPO. But maybe the first one is open AI is preparing for an IPO at a $1 trillion valuation. When you see some of this stuff, do you like, are you just like long NASDAQ? Are you buying coins in your personal book? Like, what do you own?”
2025-11-05 · Forward Guidance · The Next Chapter For Blockworks | Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, and you're seeing it right now, like, you know, I don't think the market's open yet. We're before 9 30, but futures were down. It was down, you know, after market yesterday, after the Fed. And then we also saw all the big tech earnings last night and the big tech earnings. I think people are still trying to figure out like, is there too much CapEx? Like, what is happening in terms of AI? What is it really going to contribute in terms of future earnings and, you know, GDP and the market seems to continue to have these kind of like hiccups around it. But to your point, like AI crypto, like I don't know how you stop either of them, right? Like, and I don't know how you can't be really bullish over the next 10 years, even if like every quarter we get these, you know, kind of Rob, what do you do?”
2025-11-05 · Forward Guidance · The Next Chapter For Blockworks | Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That doesn't mean that the stock price doesn't go up or down of Salesforce or whatever. Is this time any real? Because at the end of the day, like, you know, this is a levered Nasdaq play at the end of the day. If any one of the Mag7s sneezes or has bad earnings report, the entire crypto is going to dump.”
2025-11-05 · Forward Guidance · The Next Chapter For Blockworks | Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Really You just keep seeing the bull mark and never die, you know, but like your point when we were pitching back in 2021, like we would say crypto is a secular trend, like the software like 2001, 2001, you had a very big shift not to do like archaeology, right? But like it's. You went from on prem to software as a service, companies like Salesforce totally changed the game. CapEx to OpEx. And then From 2001 all the way to now, you saw a huge proliferation of just adoption of software. So many companies, right? Public companies, whatever. But during that time, of course, you had like macro shocks and whatever. But like that trend line was secular.”
2025-11-05 · Forward Guidance · The Next Chapter For Blockworks | Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Excited. I feel like we keep having this discussion about how we're in this multi year bull market right after the actual prices on the go down in the timeline. Like it's really bearish. Like we had the Fed yesterday and we got like a little hawkish about December dipped under 110k and the timeline's all bearish. And we'll just keep saying this is actually a bull market, just not the one people want.”
2025-11-05 · Forward Guidance · The Next Chapter For Blockworks | Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We'll share a little bit soon on what we're announcing, what we're building next. We've got a bunch of big things underway that you guys know, but don't want to share too much of it publicly right now. But I'd say the mega trend that Mike and I get really excited about is the last 10 years, the megatrend was assets moving on chain. The next 10 years is going to be companies and real revenue moving on chain. And that's both crypto native companies doing hundreds of millions, billions of revenue on chain, but it's also Robin Hood launching a chain and Stripe launching a chain and BlackRock moving their ETFs on chain. So I think that's the mega trend that we get really excited.”
2025-11-05 · Forward Guidance · The Next Chapter For Blockworks | Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“On the platform It's good. It's, yeah, it's very strong. They care about different things than crypto people do. And you probably see this because I know you guys are investors in some other data companies as well. They are much more sophisticated, I would say, obviously, naturally. But they're in it. They're deep into the weeds. I mean, if you guys saw JP Morganhead. Coverage on Coinbase this week or last, I think it was this week, and like half of it was talking about base. Right, so they're like, they're more sophisticated than people might realize.”
2025-11-05 · Forward Guidance · The Next Chapter For Blockworks | Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think everyone knows a lot of the chains pay a lot of money across the industry. But the thing that we get really excited about is the applications. I think the applications do not do an amazing job of getting their story out there and their financials and their data out there. Like you have companies like Maple and Polymarket and like hyperliquid and pump, like real revenue, real on-chain revenue. And it's not, they're not telling that story in a great way.”
2025-11-05 · Forward Guidance · The Next Chapter For Blockworks | Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Who are your largest customers or that crypto native projects like Solana? Like if you're a major protocol, you probably are working with Blockworks on the dashboard side. But who are the larger or is it funds? Is it enterprise?”
2025-11-05 · Forward Guidance · The Next Chapter For Blockworks | Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, the first, so we launched data in 2022. First year, we didn't monetize it. Next two years, revenue is growing 100% year over year, but like it was still kind of small potatoes. Yeah, exactly. But the last year revenues grow like the recurring revenue side of the business has grown like several hundred percent this year. And it's the first time in really like we've been building Blockwork since December of 2017. It's the first time in basically eight years where we have extreme product market fit, I would say. We found who the customer is. We have extreme product market fit, average deal size is in the hundreds of thousands for these data deals. And yeah, it's just the thing that we want to go all in on.”
2025-11-05 · Forward Guidance · The Next Chapter For Blockworks | Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“As jankiest little booth. Yeah, I was like, I think we gave him a five way in the back. I only went there because it was a beanie bag, and I was like, yeah, yeah. And you had just gone it off the ground. Maybe talk a lot about what you're seeing that side of the business. What's the grand vision for it?”
2025-11-05 · Forward Guidance · The Next Chapter For Blockworks | Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Did you do a lot of analysis of maybe talk a little bit more about the data, right? Because I remember going to, I think it was DAS hereless or DAS where you launched the, you just launched a research platform. Dan, there was like a small booth.”
2025-11-05 · Forward Guidance · The Next Chapter For Blockworks | Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“May's not on the mask fellas. Yeah, but yeah, like, so distribution, there's owned audience and rented audience. And when you have people hitting your website to read a news story, that's a rented audience. When you have people listening to your podcast every single day and reading your newsletter every single morning, that's an owned audience. And so distribution audience building is super important for us still. And I think it gives us a big competitive edge on the data side. But the focus is owned audience instead of printed audience.”
2025-11-05 · Forward Guidance · The Next Chapter For Blockworks | Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, distribution is still incredibly important. I actually think distribution remains king. Like, when as software gets easier and easier to build from either vibe coding or AI or whatever it is, or just really talented engineers, distribution is super important. We had found that over the years, our distribution was coming from podcasts, a couple core newsletters and social.”
2025-11-05 · Forward Guidance · The Next Chapter For Blockworks | Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think a lot of discussions you and I had before was Do you need to keep the news as a public good, as a way to get the data I think that had been part of the calculus before. Like, what made you kind of say, hey, listen.”
2025-11-05 · Forward Guidance · The Next Chapter For Blockworks | Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think there's just a. Okay, at a macro point of view, I think Mike and my belief is that, and I've talked about this on Empire, 2025 is a line in the sand moment for the industry. I think we will, I think where we are is kind of 2003, 2004 for the internet. Boom, bust, rebirth. We're entering a 20-year bull market for the industry. Like there'll be some chop, whatever, but it is just a trend, 20-year trend trend line up for the next 20 years. I think we'll look back and say that there was kind of crypto was like 2009 to 2024, 2025, line in the sand, the industry forever on. And when that happens, you get consolidation and the winners win big and the losers lose. And I think we plan on winning. We plan on winning and not losing. But to do that, you have to make some, yeah, tough decisions and you have to rip band-aids.”
2025-11-05 · Forward Guidance · The Next Chapter For Blockworks | Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“One thing maybe I'd add before you move on from the news side is I actually had two portfolio companies of ours, which out yesterday and say, hey, listen, we really need help on comms. Do you think actually anyone from Blockworks would be good for that? And so if there's anybody out there, and we'll reach out separately outside of the pod, but from the news team that was affected by the layoffs and is interested in portfolio company opportunities, potentially incomms, things like that, definitely get in touch one way.”
2025-11-05 · Forward Guidance · The Next Chapter For Blockworks | Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If these people want to stay in journalism, they should go somewhere where journalism is the thing that that company is excellent at. We're not going to be that's not our focus is to be world class writing news or something like that. We're going to be world class building software and data.”
2025-11-05 · Forward Guidance · The Next Chapter For Blockworks | Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, y The last thing I'd say on news is like a company only gets one maybe if they're extremely lucky two things that they can be world-class at and you're actually if you do too many things you're doing a disservice to the people who work on those things and that's actually how I had come to feel about news is Yeah, you mentioned some of the names like Casey Jack like Catherine like these are some Ben like McSweeney like Jeff like these are some of the best journalists in the entire industry and and even beyond just crypto we were doing them a disservice because like you know when if you go inside of our leadership meetings news wasn't getting any airtime we're talking about data and software and things like that and yeah you end up actually people aren't going to leave or some people maybe but like most people aren't aren't like most people don't like quitting jobs but you end up doing a disservice to them by not giving them a platform that to really focus on so like my actually recommend”
2025-11-05 · Forward Guidance · The Next Chapter For Blockworks | Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So when I invested, you know, you and I have been the start of the podcast, made sense to invest. At the time, we had a discussion around, hey, what's the evolution of blockworks? And you've been thinking about this thing for a number of years, which is. Transitioning to a data company and kind of a Bloomberg type, right? Bloomberg has obviously releases stories and has an editorial team, but they make 90% of their money on the subscription and the data, right? Maybe I don't know if there's anything else you want to talk about on the news side, but I would love to maybe touch on the last thing I'd say.”
2025-11-05 · Forward Guidance · The Next Chapter For Blockworks | Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The ant, yeah, like the list goes on. It's because it's a really tough business model. It kind of does become a public good. And that's a little bit how we felt is like the news business. We didn't think that the caliber of journalism in the industry was where it needed to be. Now I think that's changed a bit. You have, I think Laura's doing amazing work at Unchained. I think I'm impressed by what the bullish people have done with Coindesk. I thought they were going to kill it and they've kept it alive and done a good job. This guy John Rice is back as the editor-in-chief at Cointelegraph, the Defiant. There's a company called Coinage that is doing like interesting experiments around community-owned journalism. DL News, the block. Like, there's a lot of good journalism. And actually, the traditional publications are covering it better. Bloomberg's got a great criteria team. Yeah, Wall Street Journal.”
2025-11-05 · Forward Guidance · The Next Chapter For Blockworks | Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This is one of the reasons that we felt okay doing this is so like news had always had for a long time been the smallest business unit of blockworks from a revenue perspective like it doesn't really make money but it was kind of a public good that you do and that's by the way that's a that's the reason like a lot of news companies are owned by billionaires Washington Post Jeff Bezos Time Bennioff Forbes like the you know LA like LA times Boston Globe it was”
2025-11-05 · Forward Guidance · The Next Chapter For Blockworks | Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“For someone, look as I think of it, you guys existed in a time where we needed more integrity on the journalism side, more fairness in covering stories. You know, over the last couple of years, traditional media publications were not positive about the industry, were not portraying it in a fair light. You guys, I think, played an immense role there. What's the future of journalism in crypto?”
2025-11-05 · Forward Guidance · The Next Chapter For Blockworks | Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Tough thing about a layout. Most industries get fought from the outside. Like, you know, there's a, you have like an AI or something. Like everyone in AI kind of bonds together, and then it's the outsiders who are like attacking AI or something like that, or even like a construction industry or healthcare. Like, you kind of bond together as an industry. Crypto has such a immune reaction because there are a lot of scammers in the industry. There are a lot of people with bad intentions. And so it's interesting to see, I mean, the crypto react building something in crypto is a little more intense, I think, than building something somewhere else.”
2025-11-05 · Forward Guidance · The Next Chapter For Blockworks | Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I will say, I think it was you guys, I looked at a lot of the posts of the reporters and all of those were overwhelmingly positive. They're like, look, Blockworks took an early bet in my career. I was straight out of college. They hired me. I came in here and like that wouldn't have happened in a traditional media company. And I think, yeah, there's a lot of noise. There's the data, DeFi, Saga, if you want to talk about it. But I think to me, I immediately went in the retweets. I immediately went to the people that I know that I've contributed to stories and all of them were incredibly grateful.”
2025-11-05 · Forward Guidance · The Next Chapter For Blockworks | Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, we had, I mean, we got sighted. I really think we had the best editorial team in all of crypto at this point. We had an amazing team. It was a small team. Like it was a really small journal. Like when you look at the number of people who got like, oh yesterday, it was like, I think nine journalists total. It was a really small team. And they just punched way above their weight. They were younger, scrappier, and very technical and understood crypto, which is, by the way, why I think they'll really land on the feet and find something quickly. But yeah, we covered, we wrote thousands of stories. We were, you know, mentioned in every mainstream publication. We were mentioned in... Yeah, like pretty much every angle of the industry that could have been covered we covered. And yeah, I feel very proud of it.”
2025-11-05 · Forward Guidance · The Next Chapter For Blockworks | Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Listen, I mean, I saw a lot of you responding and engaging with people, and that shows it's not, you know, everyone's entitled to cop. And I don't think, you know, the intention was good about the post. The internet's always going to come at you and there's always internet trolls and you get hate, like social media is just a hate excuse hate. But I think the way you responded to those, and you very quickly was like, yeah, in hindsight should have done that. And I think that, you know, that shows everything that you stand for. Respect for that. Maybe going back to what is like the if you look at the evolution of block works on the on the news side, what were some of the highlight stories that you guys covered? I know there was the FDX story, a lot of the reporting.”
2025-11-05 · Forward Guidance · The Next Chapter For Blockworks | Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, that was a. I actually made this tweet. What Rob was referencing is I made this Twitter post and announcing it. And actually, this was a really good lesson. So maybe I can learn the lesson so other people don't have to go through it. I think. There is a time and place to celebrate a company's successes, and Blockworks is doing great like we have, and I mentioned we have record revenue this year. We're going to have record revenue next year. A post about layoffs is not the place to mention that. It's not, it's a place to celebrate the people who are here, help them find new jobs, land on their feet. And so actually in hindsight, I think it was fair to take some crap, but hopefully I say this out loud so that other people can learn from my mistakes.”
2025-11-05 · Forward Guidance · The Next Chapter For Blockworks | Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Them. And so, you know, all my well wishes to everybody on your side and all the talent you guys had. And, you know, it was a tough day for UNO as well. And you got a little bit of backlash online. And so”
2025-11-05 · Forward Guidance · The Next Chapter For Blockworks | Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I've engaged with a number of the Block Works journalists over the years. I think Catherine and Jack and a few others. Yeah. And I think, you know, I had always referred to Blockworks as, you know, probably the best in terms of breaking new stories, at least over the last year or two. I think a lot of talent within the newsroom. And it's a sad day for anybody who has to, you know, gets laid off. But I think they'll all land on their feet. And I'm really excited for them and for your new direction. And I think as someone who had been through the global financial crisis, that's obviously a different type of layoff that was happening at that time. But so many of the people that I knew in 2010 and 2011, they were able to go and, I think, really find another place where they were able to build a career that I think was in a direction that was a little bit different than before, but was really exciting.”
2025-11-05 · Forward Guidance · The Next Chapter For Blockworks | Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Letter those will continue. But yeah, we shot down the news division. And unfortunately, that meant we laid off, we had nine journalists who got laid off. And that's just a, yeah, yesterday just, or Wednesday was just a tough day. That's never easy. And these journalists are, I think journalists get a lot of crap from people who don't understand journalism as a profession. It is one of the hardest things to do. You're getting pitched all day long by people trying to promote something and show you something. And they're basically trying to sift through the marketing and the PR to figure out like, yeah, what's the real story here? And they have an incredibly tough job. And a lot of the economics are fighting against them. Like we see journalism layoffs all day long, not just in crypto, but in traditional media and stuff like that. So anyways, yeah, we decided to shut down the news division. It's not the thing that we wanted to focus on. We want to focus on the data business. But, yeah, did just want to give a lot of love to the journal.”
2025-11-05 · Forward Guidance · The Next Chapter For Blockworks | Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, good. So, yeah, maybe just to address it a little bit. So Blockworks, when Mike and I started Blockworks, we wanted to solve what we called the information problem. And the issue was that there were all these space with super retail. It was going to become a big institutional asset class. All these institutional folks were going to come in. They didn't want to listen to crypto panda on Reddit. They wanted a more trusted source of information. So that's what we built for the last eight years. built events and news business and podcasts and newsletters and all that kind of stuff. Yesterday we made the really tough decision to shut down our news division. So we're keeping everything show goes on with everything data, research, data. We'll still have three DASs next year, New York, London, Abu Dhabi. All the podcasts are staying. A couple of the newsletters won't continue, but like Byron's newsletter.”
2025-11-05 · Forward Guidance · The Next Chapter For Blockworks | Empire · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT