Blockworks has acquired Messari, combining two of the largest crypto data and research platforms. The deal closed June 12. The Wall Street Journal reported the price above $10 million — a steep markdown from Messari's roughly $300 million valuation after its 2022 Series B.
A steep discount and a strategic play
Blockworks raised capital in April at a $192 million valuation. The round was led by ParaFi Capital and Reciprocal Ventures, with Coinbase Ventures participating. The company said at the time it planned to acquire competitors. The Messari deal made good on that promise.
Blockworks co-founder Jason Yanowitz has said the goal is to build the 'Bloomberg of crypto.' The combined platform covers over 40,000 digital assets. That scope puts it in a different league than most crypto media outlets.
Why data is the new content
The acquisition comes as crypto media faces a brutal traffic environment. Google search referrals to publishers fell about 33% globally in the year leading up to November 2025. US referrals were down 38%; Europe dropped 17%. Google Discover referrals fell 21%.
By early 2026, roughly 58% of Google searches ended without a click to any outside site. AI-generated summaries are eating the click-through. Penske Media has sued Google, arguing the search company is cannibalizing traffic that publishers were promised in exchange for indexing.
Meanwhile, corporate AI adoption is climbing. CryptoSlate reported figures from the OECD: 8.7% in 2023, 14.2% in 2024, and 20.2% in 2025. The value in financial information is shifting from articles to databases. Crypto media companies are rebuilding as data platforms, analytics providers, and institutional infrastructure.
The Bloomberg benchmark
Bloomberg earns around $11 billion annually. A single terminal seat costs about $31,980 in 2026. It has over 325,000 subscribers. That's the model Yanowitz is chasing — a subscription-based data terminal for crypto.
Blockworks and Messari together are still a long way from those numbers. But the direction is clear: stop writing for Google, start selling data.
The deal also reflects a broader consolidation in crypto research. Independent analysts and small shops have struggled to monetize as retail interest wanes and institutional clients demand verified, structured data. A combined Blockworks-Messari can offer both raw data and curated research under one roof.
What's unresolved: whether the combined platform can achieve Bloomberg-level trust and pricing in a market that's still deeply volatile and reputationally shaky. The next few quarters will show if the 'Bloomberg of crypto' is an ambition or a plan.
