Yahoo Finance Singapore's Foresight buys stake in media firm onced back by Bankman-Fried
By Sonali Basak and Muyao Shen
(Bloomberg) — In yet another example of how crypto is moving on from FTX, a Singapore-based investor is taking a majority stake in crypto news publication The Block after a succession of leadership changes. The media company had been seeking to rid itself of any remaining association with a former CEO who had accepted clandestine loans from Sam Bankman-Fried’s Alameda Research.
Foresight Ventures acquired a majority stake in The Block in a deal with that former executive, Michael McCaffrey, according to representatives for both the VC fund and the media company.
Foresight Ventures is a digital asset-focused venture firm based in Singapore that had deployed around US$70 million across both crypto and non-crypto projects so far this year, and some US$200 million since the fund’s inception. Foresight entered into the transaction with McCaffrey directly.
This deal is worth more than US$50 million, according to people familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified discussing the details of a transaction that had not yet been made public.
In 2021, McCaffrey secretly accepted three different loans totaling US$43 million from Bankman-Fried’s trading firm Alameda Research, according to The Block’s own reporting published after FTX collapsed.
McCaffrey used some of the borrowed money to buy out other investors in The Block, and to “provide working capital” directly to the crypto news site according to a statement published at the time.
In a statement posted after the loans became public, McCaffrey said that no one at the media company had known about the arrangement.
4/ I didn’t disclose the loan to anyone. Absolutely no one at The Block knew about the financial arrangement between my holding company and SBF, including the editorial and the research teams.
— Mike McCaffrey (@McCaffrMike) December 9, 2022
It is not clear whether McCaffrey will use the proceeds from the Foresight Ventures deal to repay the loans to the estate of the now-collapsed hedge fund, or what the status is of those loans. Representatives for the FTX estate did respond to a request for comment. McCaffrey declined to comment.
Forest Bai, chief executive officer of Foresight Ventures, will join The Block as chairman of its board. General partner Tony Cheng will also join the board, according to The Block’s current chief executive officer Larry Cermak.
The crypto media firm’s previous association with Bankman-Fried “doesn’t really bother me,” Bai told Bloomberg News in a written response. “I’m not hung up on their past.”
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