With central token prices nearing two-year lows, amid a wave of bankruptcies from significant businesses, the crypto sector is going through one of its darkest periods.

CoinDesk CEO Kevin Worth informed Reuters of his motivation for engaging with the investment banking services of Lazard.

“My goal in hiring Lazard is to explore various options to attract growth capital to the CoinDesk business, which may include a partial or full sale,” Kevin Worth said.

Several unsolicited proposals totalling more than USD 200 million have been made to Digital Currency Group Inc., or DCG, the parent company of CoinDesk, according to persons with knowledge of the situation. DCG paid USD 500,000 to purchase the media company in 2016. CoinDesk made USD 50 million in revenue in 2022 through web advertising, its index, and its events businesses.

The latest news comes amid upheaval within the business, which started with the devaluation of stablecoins TerraUSD and Luna at the 2022 beginning.

While crypto exchange FTX went bankrupt (And now facing legal heat), Coinbase laid off a fifth of its workers in 2022, following the previous elimination of over 1,000 positions.

New York-based CoinDesk was founded in 2013 with the aim to monitor the Bitcoin price. From there, it became a media services provider for the entire ecosystem of cryptocurrencies. Digital Currency Group is the business’s sole owner.

In a recent YouTube Livestream, Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson claims that he is interested in acquiring CoinDesk.

“My interest on the media side is more broad… I would like to figure out how to get to journalistic integrity again,” Charles Hoskinson remarked.

The crypto mogul, who spearheads Cardano development company Input Output, also suggested turning various news pieces into non-fungible tokens, thus making it possible for people to interact with them.

Charles Hoskinson also said that he had heard through the grapevine that CoinDesk is either raising money or attempting to get acquired by someone.

The post CoinDesk mulls selling business, Cardano founder presents offer appeared first on International Finance.

Ripple on CoinDesk said, “This ground-breaking pilot program is the first of its kind to be launched by a central bank. Participating banks from the [Kingdom of Saudi Arabia] will use xCurrent to instantly settle payments sent into and out of the country, with greater transparency and lower costs.”

Most GCC countries are focused on fintechs to enhance their banking efficiency. UAE’s money transfer and forex giant Western Union has also partnered with Ripple to push real-time cross-border payments using blockchain.

Western Union CEO Hikmet Ersek told Bloomberg, “We are looking especially in the processing settlement and working capital optimization, also in the regulation part, on the compliance part on the blockchain capabilities. And we do test, we do have some tests with Ripple.”

Saudi Arabian could easily save up to US$400mn each year using the blockchain software, according to Moody’s Investor Service.

The Moody’s Report reads “Moody’s estimates that even a 10 percent reduction in the cost of completing and managing a cross-border transaction will translate to savings of roughly $200m-$400m per year system-wide.”

The post Saudi Central Bank and Ripple to carry pilot test for cross-border transactions appeared first on International Finance.