Blockworks Acquires Messari

**Jason Yanowitz** (0:08)
All right, buddy, partner. Let's go. Big day.

**Michael Ippolito** (0:12)
Big day. Special pod.

**Jason Yanowitz** (0:13)
Special pod, special pod. Empire, at least, doesn't usually release on a Thursday, so you know we got it.

**Michael Ippolito** (0:19)
Wow.

**Jason Yanowitz** (0:19)
Yeah, big, big, big.

**Michael Ippolito** (0:20)
Huge deal. Everyone's wondering, what made Empire release off schedule?

**Jason Yanowitz** (0:25)
And we got you in New York.

**Michael Ippolito** (0:26)
That's true, that's true. I know. Big city, lots of sounds, used to my Montana lifestyle now.

**Jason Yanowitz** (0:31)
Yeah, very overwhelming day for Mike.

**Michael Ippolito** (0:35)
Country bumpkin.

**Jason Yanowitz** (0:36)
Exciting. Well, hopefully, folks saw the announcement. Hopefully, we were loud enough on social, but we have a big announcement, which is today we acquired Messari. So we wanted to spend some time talking about, I think, three things right now, which is, one, why Messari? There's a lot of great data platforms in crypto. Why is Messari such a perfect fit for Blockworks? Number two, kind of what is, I think, maybe how, how are Mike and I seeing, like, this moment in time right now in crypto? I think it's a pretty interesting time in crypto. Maybe institutional bull, crypto token bear. How do we see what's happening right now playing out? And then maybe the third is, where does Blockworks come into this?

**Michael Ippolito** (1:12)
Yeah.

**Jason Yanowitz** (1:12)
Right, Blockworks, this is year nine for the business. We've evolved a lot. What, yeah, I know.

**Michael Ippolito** (1:17)
Nine years.

**Jason Yanowitz** (1:17)
I know. I've got some greys going on up here.

**Michael Ippolito** (1:19)
You do.

**Jason Yanowitz** (1:20)
I do. I do. It's not good.
Gotta get the, what's the, you know, four men, the little comb with the anti-grey.

**Michael Ippolito** (1:26)
We don't need to make this a grooming episode.

**Jason Yanowitz** (1:27)
All right, fine, fine, fine. All right, so let's get into, maybe let's start with why Messari.

**Michael Ippolito** (1:32)
So first of all, I think you and I just have a ton of respect for Messari. Blockworks and Messari kind of grew up, I feel like opposite one another, and we kind of had two different parts of the Infinity Gauntlet, which was Messari started from day one, focused on this mission of increasing transparency for investors and promoting fundamental-based decision-making in crypto. Blockworks has had that mission as well. Our mission is increasing trust in on-chain markets. We started a little bit more from the side of media distribution, access to investors and we've been moving into investor relations. But Messari, it's just extremely, that mission is extremely similar and we have a ton of respect for what they've been doing.
And as we think about what the industry needs at this particular moment in time, is kind of a mix of being extremely complimentary with one another and solving the core problem, which is eliminating information asymmetry, providing good information for investors and institutions, and then a focus on standardized data and disclosures. So really, it's kind of a match made in heaven, I think, for us.

**Jason Yanowitz** (2:34)
Yeah, actually, if you go back and listen, so Messari was founded by two folks, Ryan and Dan, and then passed the torch to Eric, and then now, Rand has been running the company. They've all been, all four of them have been singularly focused on one thing, which is providing better data in crypto markets for eight years. And actually, they got into crypto data way before we did. We started more from the top of the funnel, media distribution, information for folks, and they started with kind of the hard assets, right?
The quantitative information, whereas we started more qualitative. You know, they started maybe bottoms up, we started top down, and we've ended at a very similar place. And so I think we've just seen, yeah, look, they've been our rival, and we've competed against them, and we've won deals against them, we've lost deals against them. And I think you said it right, we have an enormous amount of respect for what they've been doing.

**Michael Ippolito** (3:24)
Yeah. You got to help me out with the sports analogy here, but who are two respected athletes?

**Jason Yanowitz** (3:29)
We used a Marvel analogy with the, you know, Mike's the movie guy, I'm the sports guy, and so he's using a Marvel analogy here.

**Michael Ippolito** (3:35)
Oh, God, I'm not coming off very cool in this podcast already.

**Jason Yanowitz** (3:38)
No, no, no, no. So maybe let's talk about the product decisions that Messari chose, because I think we both attacked crypto data, but we attacked it maybe from one direction, they attacked it from the other.