Last week it was reported that Barry Silbert's Bitcoin venture investment firm Digital Currency Group (DCG) acquired the industry publication, CoinDesk. Now we bring you a short Q&A with Ryan Selkis, Director of Growth at DCG and Team Lead of CoinDesk.
What will your new role as head of Coin Desk entail?
I will continue to serve as Director of Growth for Digital Currency Group. Scaling CoinDesk and its successful Consensus conference brand is our top growth priority for the year. I will be working on operations and strategy for the company, and playing a leading role in crafting our content agenda for Consensus 2016, our second annual Blockchain summit.
What are DCG's goals in buying CoinDesk?
We thought that it was important to support a critical source of independent journalism for the blockchain industry. In addition, we found significant opportunities to increase the level of investment into the company's research products and high-quality events, both of which help educate new audiences on the potential of bitcoin and blockchain technology, and present potentially lucrative business opportunities.
How do you plan to monetize the site?
We will continue to rely on the support of sponsors and advertisers that pay for ad placement, event branding, or custom research.
Is DCG refocusing CoinDesk as an events brand?
CoinDesk is and will continue to be the industry's leading source of news and analysis for all things bitcoin and blockchain technology. However, like other leading tech media outlets, Techcrunch, Re/Code, etc. we believe there is a terrific opportunity to Leverage our brand positioning as the industry's leading content provider to curate can't-miss events.
Why is the move to New York necessary?
Ryan Selkis, Director of Growth, Digital Currency Group; and Team Lead, CoinDesk.
Through the combination of CoinDesk and DCG's events team, the majority of CoinDesk employees are now based in the New York City area (including me). Most of the CoinDesk audience and all of the full-time editorial team reside in the US. From an operating perspective, it was simply more appropriate to move the headquarters, although we will continue to maintain and invest in the London office.
I should note that the move to NYC is to a different part of town than DCG's headquarters, so we're creating real physical barriers in addition to the informational barriers that have been implemented.
Consensus 2015 (Photo: CoinDesk)
