CoinDesk Ethics Policy

CoinDesk is the leading news publication covering the digital transformation of money in the 21st century. 

Our mission is to inform, educate and connect the global community of investors, innovators and users of cryptocurrencies, blockchains and other decentralized technologies. That includes everyone from sophisticated professionals to curious newcomers. 

Founded in 2013, we serve an audience of 3 million monthly website visitors, 6,000+ annual conference attendees, 200,000 newsletter subscribers and thousands of readers of our research reports.  

Editorial independence

CoinDesk is a wholly owned subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, one of the largest private investors in the industry and a provider of trading and other investment services for that industry. We operate independently of the parent company. Our office is in the same building as DCG’s but on a separate floor, three stories apart, with different access cards.  

DCG has no involvement in editorial or content decisions, and our journalists cover DCG and its portfolio companies and investments as they would any other subjects, without fear or favor. 

CoinDesk and DCG have agreed to abide by a strict independence policy that forbids DCG employees from pressuring CoinDesk journalists for coverage or favorable treatment, and encourages CoinDesk employees to come forward and report any such attempts. The full text of the policy can be found in Appendix A below.

DCG reporting disclosure

In the interest of transparency, all CoinDesk articles include at the bottom a disclosure of our corporate ownership, with links to the full lists of DCG’s portfolio companies and cryptocurrency investments. (Those lists appear below in Appendix B.)

Further, any article about our parent company or its other wholly owned subsidiaries (Grayscale, Genesis, Foundry, Luno) includes a prominent disclosure in the body text that CoinDesk is owned by DCG. 

Journalistic standards

We strive for the utmost accuracy, fairness, objectivity and responsible reporting, whether surfacing original news or in reviewing and corroborating information from other sources. 

Our journalists know their reporting can affect individual and company reputations, and that they must always be patient and persistent in seeking comment from the subjects of their stories. There are usually at least two sides to any story, and CoinDesk will always be diligent in seeking a diverse range of intelligent, sober perspectives.

All factual errors in published articles will be corrected promptly upon discovery, and all corrections and amendments to an article will be disclosed in a note at the bottom. In rare cases where the central idea of an article warrants a correction, the disclosure will be placed at the top and shared on social media, so the correction is broadcast as widely as the original error. 

CoinDesk reporters must disclose in their profile pages any cryptocurrency investments of $1,000 or more; update these disclosures upon any material changes; and, in their articles, mention any potential conflicts of interest. They should avoid such conflicts by minimizing their own coverage of assets or companies in which they have a financial interest, or of issues they are involved in as activists. Above all, they may never misuse our platform for personal gain. (See “Personal Investing,” below.)    

Editors and reporters may never accept payment from any company or individual for coverage or preferential treatment. Journalists are not allowed to accept gifts from companies or individuals CoinDesk covers or is likely to cover. (Exceptions may be made for items of nominal value, such as a T-shirt, hat or coffee mug, or food or beverages that can be consumed within 24 hours.)

Opinion articles, whether written by outside contributors or staff members, are always clearly labeled as such, with a design that is distinct from news stories.

As with all reliable media outlets,  we do not reveal the identities of sources who speak to us on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation from the powerful. However, we are also careful about relying on anonymous sources. All stories that originate with an anonymous source require corroboration from at least one other source with firsthand knowledge of the information, and often more, depending on the sensitivity of the story. 

Further, we will respect the pseudonymity of credible sources who have established reputations in the crypto community under their online handles. We believe prolific software developers and other influential figures who do not give their legal names have reputational skin in the game when they attach their words to their well-known pseudonyms. In many cases, that attachment is sufficient to expect a sufficient degree of accountability. As such, we will not reveal anyone’s identity without his or her consent, absent an overwhelming public interest in doing so. We reject a model of journalism that needlessly ruins the lives or careers of harmless, obscure individuals for clicks or moral points.

Personal investing

CoinDesk always seeks to prioritize its highest-value asset – the trust of its readers. It is the job of our journalists, researchers and market analysts to be both transparent and accountable to the public, and seek to uphold high standards of conduct. 

However, CoinDesk respects that employees may wish to make decisions related to their wealth management. With this in mind, CoinDesk has worked with compliance and legal advisers to develop a strict set of guidelines that balance the company’s vision while respecting our employees’ financial autonomy. 

Above all, these guidelines seek to ensure:

Our policies are designed to promote stringent definitions for transparency so as to ensure the trust of our audience is upheld.

Any employee who buys, sells or trades crypto assets in amounts of less than $1,000 must notify CoinDesk’s compliance officer within 24 hours of the event. Any employee who buys, sells or trades amounts more than US$1,000 must notify the compliance officer at least 24 hours before doing so. 

Upon receipt, these notifications will be reviewed by the compliance officer to ensure the trade meets our policies and guidance. Items up to and including the employee’s recent meetings, articles or corporate outreach efforts will be evaluated. Employees must hold all crypto asset purchases for a minimum of 30 days.

Further, trading is forbidden during office hours. Employees are not permitted to short crypto assets or trade futures contracts. As noted, journalists must disclose crypto positions worth $1,000 or more in their profile pages and update them immediately to reflect any changes.

CoinDesk employees who are found to be not in compliance with these rules may be subject to penalties up to and including termination.

Social media

CoinDesk’s mission is to drive the conversation around the future of money, and social media is one of the best tools to do that. Our official brand accounts are the authoritative editorial voice of CoinDesk. We use social media to share our content and to make announcements about events and new products.

Journalists are encouraged to interact with users of our content through their personal handles. In doing so, they are representing CoinDesk’s brand and values. While they may use their own distinctive voice or express personal opinions, they are expected to conduct themselves professionally. They may not make personal attacks or spread unverified information that could damage an individual’s or company’s reputation. 

Advertising

One of the ways CoinDesk generates revenue is through online advertising. Aside from maintaining basic standards of quality and content, CoinDesk will refuse any ads that directly promote a token (ads from companies with tokens but are promoting some other aspect of their business may be permitted).

If an entity has announced any fundraising event (such as an ICO or IPO), CoinDesk will refuse any ads from that entity that are not explicitly permitted under Securities and Exchange Commission advertising rules.

Events and partnerships

From time to time, CoinDesk may publish sponsored content on our platforms. This content will be explicitly labeled as sponsored, will never be written by CoinDesk journalists or editorial staffers, and will be clearly delineated from our news, analysis, research and opinion articles. Sponsored content relationships will have no impact on the journalism independently produced by CoinDesk’s editorial team. 

Likewise, CoinDesk events may include sponsored sessions. These sessions will be clearly billed as sponsored and wholly separate from the vast majority of sessions that are curated by the content team, Sponsor relationships will have no impact on speaking invitations or event programming.

Giveaways/Contests

CoinDesk journalists may not accept tokens, coins or any other products or merchandise from giveaways, contests, airdrops or other events that may affect their ability to impartially cover digital assets or the companies behind them.  

Appendix A: Policy on content independence

Context for CoinDesk

Satoshi Nakamoto’s invention inspired a movement towards the transformation of money. Bitcoin’s open-source economic model helped it thrive as developers, cryptographers, engineers, entrepreneurs or anyone else could contribute to its growth. Later, a similar design was applied to other protocols, some of which managed to “pay for their own” development as open-source technologies.

This decentralized economic model has a familiar challenge: The competition to develop these open-source technologies involves asymmetries between various stakeholders, some private, some public, some for-profit, some non-profit.

Goal for CoinDesk

As a media platform, CoinDesk’s opportunity and responsibility is to provide a forum for stakeholders of all kinds, everywhere in the world, to contribute to the conversation around the transformation of money, regardless of any asymmetry among stakeholders, dependent only on the quality of their work or ideas.

If the asymmetries mentioned above go unchecked, they could lead private, narrow interests to control open-source projects, in effect replicating the centralized system of money these projects seek to transform (or transcend).

Defining Principles

CoinDesk is a wholly owned subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, one of the largest private investors in the industry driving this process of monetary transformation and a provider of trading and other investment services for that industry. As such, both parties have a responsibility to avoid any undue influence or perception of influence over CoinDesk’s content creation operations. For CoinDesk to continue to offer a trusted forum for multi-stakeholder industry development, both parties – CoinDesk and DCG – commit to uphold the following principles with regards to their mutual relationship. 

Processes for CoinDesk

Based on those principles, both parties will commit to several rules of engagement in the conduct of CoinDesk’s operations:

Appendix B: Digital Currency Group’s investments

Last updated: September 2020

Digital assets: Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Decentraland (MANA and LAND), Ethereum Classic (ETC), Filecoin, Horizen (ZEN), Livepeer (LPT), ZCash (ZEC)

Abra 

Artie 

Avanti Bank 

Averon 

Axoni

AZA (formerly known as BitPesa)

BigchainDB

bitFlyer

BitGo

Bitmark

Bitnomial 

BitOasis 

BitPay 

Bitso

Bitwala 

Blockchain 

Blockstack

Blockstream

Blokur 

Bloq 

Bold (Acquired) 

Boost VC

Brave 

BTCC (Acquired) 

Buda

Cambridge Blockchain

Carbon

Chain (Acquired) 

Chainalysis 

ChangeTip (Acquired) 

Circle 

Civic 

Cobalt

Cognito 

Coinbase 

CoinDesk 

CoinFLEX 

Coinhouse

CoinJar 

CoinList 

Coinme 

CoinMetrics 

Coins (Acquired) 

Coinsetter (Acquired) 

Colu 

Crypto Facilities (Acquired) 

Curv 

Custos Media Technologies 

Dapper Labs 

Decent 

Decentraland 

Digital Assets Data 

Earn (Acquired) 

Electric Capital

Elemental 

Elliptic 

ErisX

EtherScan 

eToro

Figure 

Fireblocks 

Fleek (FKA Terminal) 

Flipside Crypto 

Gem 

Genesis 

Grayscale

Gyft (Acquired) 

Hedera Hashgraph 

Horizen Labs 

Horizon Blockchain Games 

itBit / Paxos 

Jackpocket 

Jiko 

Jsgenesis

Kintaba 

Korbit (Acquired) 

Kraken 

Layer1 

Ledger 

Lightning Labs 

Livepeer 

Logos 

Lolli 

Lucid Sight 

MadHive 

Mediachain Labs (Acquired) 

Merkle Data (Acquired) 

Merkle Science 

Mifiel 

Money Button 

MONI 

Multis 

Netki 

NICKL 

Nivaura 

Nomics 

norbloc 

OB1 

Omniex 

OXIO 

Paradigm 

Parity 

Pipeline 

POSaBIT 

Protocol Labs 

Provenance 

Purse 

Qohash 

Radar Relay 

Rainbow 

Reserve 

Revelator 

Ripio 

Ripple 

RSK Labs 

Safello 

Scout 

SFOX 

ShapeShift 

ShoCard 

Silvergate 

Skew 

Skuchain 

Sonia 

Staked 

Stratumn 

Streami 

Tagomi 

The Graph

Tierion 

Token 

TradeBlock 

Transparent Systems 

Unocoin 

Veem 

Wyre 

Xapo 

Zabo 

Zcash 

Zeppelin