Just In: Crypto News Outlet, The Block was Secretly Funded by SBF's Alameda Research

CEO of crypto news site The Block resigns for failing to disclose $27M loans from Alameda Research.
Moran said all of the senior leaders are staying with the organization and the company will continue to operate and publish.

Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced founder of bankrupt crypto firm FTX and its trading arm Alameda Research, secretly invested in a crypto news site, The Block for the last two years.

McCaffery supports his actions by saying that disclosing the loans to anyone would be seen as compromising the objectivity of the coverage of Bankman-Fried and his companies.

The Block’s CEO, Michael McCaffrey, immediately resigned after the loans came to light, and also steps down from The Block’s board of management which is set to expand to three people while McCaffrey remains the company’s majority shareholder. According to a statement from the news outlet Bobby Moran, The Block’s chief revenue officer will step into the role of CEO effective immediately.

McCaffrey was the only person with knowledge of the funding at the company. After an audit, McCaffery received three loans totaling $43 million from 2021 through this year.

From our own experience, we have seen no evidence that Mike ever sought to improperly influence the newsroom or research teams, particularly in their coverage of SBF, FTX and Alameda Research.

Bobby Moran admits.

The first of which was in the amount of $12 million and was used in 2021 to buy out other investors in the crypto news, data, and research provider. He took over day-to-day operations as the new CEO at that time. A second $15 million loan in January was used to help fund day-to-day operations, and the last $16 million batch of funding from Alameda was used in part to purchase an apartment in the Bahamas for McCaffrey.

1) I'm absolutely gutted by this news, which was briefed to the company this afternoon.

Underpinning my shock are feelings of utter disgust and betrayal by Mike’s actions, greed, lack of disclosure. He's literal scum. He kept every single one of us in the dark. https://t.co/jIZCxtHrfc

— Frank Chaparro (@fintechfrank) December 9, 2022

On Friday, McCaffrey told his 3,000 followers on Twitter that in early 2021, the company was in dire straits, and “the only option that materialized” was to secure a $12 million loan for his holding company from SBF.

Frank Chaparro, an editor-at-large at The Block, said in a tweet that he was “gutted by this news, which was briefed to the company this afternoon, adding that McCaffrey “kept every single one of us in the dark.”