Block taps former Azuki COO Steve Chung as CEO and takes another $10M from Foresight Ventures, doubling down on institutional data, research, and AI-driven media pivot.
Summary
- A major part of Foresight Ventures is setting the stage for The Block’s institutional era
- Multi-owner Foresight Ventures adds $10 million on top of $60 billion, signaling a push to build a “Bloomberg of digital assets” targeting funds and companies.
- The move raises new questions about independence as the venture fund tightens its grip on the crypto newsroom, as Cermak’s continued control over research is seen as a partial safeguard.
Block’s decision to install the former COO of Azuki Steve Chung as CEO, backed by another 10 million dollars from Foresight Ventures, is a clear sign: the crypto media is going full institutional, with AI and TradFi equally in the frame. It’s a sharp pivot from the current crypto winter and proprietary scandals to directly competing with Bloomberg-style data and research platforms for hedge funds, banks, and asset managers.
Chung comes to the role after a career working directly on Wall Street, legacy media, and Web3 IP.
He started at Goldman Sachs in New York, moved on to become Chief Growth Officer at Fox Corporation and Chief Digital Officer at Fox Television Stations, served as CEO of CJ ENM America, and most recently worked at Azuki, a blue-chip NFT brand built around anime‑style IP. That mix of capital markets, media distribution, and crypto culture is exactly what the owners of The Block seem to be buying.
Larry Cermak, who became CEO in 2023 after Foresight Ventures acquired nearly 80% of The Block in a $60 million deal, will step into the role of President focused on research, data, and product rather than day-to-day operations. “Steve is the right person to take Block from a category leader to a global market leader,” Cermak said in an official release, framing the move as a moment of escalation rather than a pressure-forced surrender.
Foresight’s new $10 million injection, announced alongside the hiring, is intended to fund exactly that measure.
Since 2022, the Singaporean company has been sending ten million dollars of accelerators and strategic investments in all the infrastructure of Web3, AI, and Bitcoin Ordinals, and the media is part of the stack: Block should be the distribution layer and the data that the institutional LP and portfolio companies depend on for market intelligence. The PR copy makes it clear where this is going: using the new money to “scale the institution’s research and data offerings, expand its business, and deepen its role as a key information and data provider within the global digital asset ecosystem.”
For X, the mood in the past day was cautious but curious rather than happy.
Foresight-aligned news account @WuBlockchain summarizes the move in Chinese, stressing that Chung is “曾任Fox、CJ ENM America 等公司高管，会所作NFT 在线Azuki COO,” and highlights what calm research will lead Cermak to continue. One industry account raised the PR line that Block will now sit “at the intersection of crypto, finance, and AI,” positioning Chung as an expert in all three cultures. Binance’s @BinanceSquare news feed emphasized the Foresight framework, calling the move an “acceleration of institutional expansion” rather than a simple leadership change.
The deeper question is what kind of media product emerges when a crypto-native newsroom becomes a portfolio line for a business whose strategy is clearly directed at institutional monetization.
Foresight already controls the cap table and is now writing another $10 million check; Chung’s mandate is to build a global business venture on top of that. That likely means more paid research, richer data sets, and more targeted financial and corporate products—and less focus on chasing sales clicks. From a market structure point of view, that makes sense: crypto is institutionalized, big payments stay with professional clients, and the most important content is data-driven, time-sensitive research, not commentators.
But it also raises general concerns about independence and conflicts of interest.
Block is still operating with the scars of disappointment from its previous exposure to Alameda/FTX funds, which led to the change in ownership and the appointment of Cermak as CEO in the first place. Now, as one company doubles down financially and strategically, critics of X are already questioning whether coverage of Foresight’s portfolio companies and themes—like AI‑crypto convergence or certain accelerator projects—can last at arm’s length. The fact that Cermak remains in charge of research and product is widely seen as a partial protection, but institutional customers will likely demand tighter governance around disclosure and firefighting than students ever did.
For Chung’s part, his track record suggests he’ll rely on IP, genre, and distribution as much as data.
At Fox and CJ ENM America, his role was to build digital businesses and global reach for traditional and broadcast channels. At Azuki, he worked on the border of NFT-based media franchises and IP distribution, where community and liquidity are as important as content. Bringing that playbook to The Block means you can expect a variety of formats—video, events, B2B education—designed for institutional buyers but fueled by crypto-native culture. It’s the equivalent of IP on-chain transmission media: trying to wrap research, data, and product into a single, usable asset.
In the short term, the move is to bet that there is at least one crypto-native space fully “Bloomberg of digital assets,” and that the window to build it is now, before banks and legacy data vendors completely capture the category.
If Chung implements, Block can become an automated terminal for trading liquid tokens, stablecoins, and eventually tokenize real-world assets. If it doesn’t, the platform risks being squeezed between free-chain data dashboards and heavyweights that already feed crypto prices and derivatives data into existing terminals. Either way, the nomination and the $10 million check confirm what the market already knows: crypto media is no longer just about news; it’s infrastructure.
