CoinDesk Wins a Polk Award, One of Journalism's Top Prizes, for Explosive FTX Coverage

“This is an important milestone, not only for CoinDesk, but for crypto media generally,” said, CoinDesk‘s chief content officer. “Despite all that Ian and Tracy’s incredible reporting exposed – and the fallout that it triggered – the crypto industry will continue to have a significant impact on the world. Its vital that it be covered with the kind of probing, well-informed, professional journalism embodied by these two reporters and their attentive, dedicated editors.”

The industry-shaking Nov. 2 story from Allison, a senior reporter, resulted from a source‘s tip that Sam Bankman-Fried’s closely held trading firm, Alameda Research, was on shakier financial footing than was generally known. Allison got to work finding evidence and nailed it by obtaining the companys balance sheet, which was not a public document.

It showed that a significant portion of Alameda‘s billions of dollars in assets was secretly made up of FTT, a sort of digital Monopoly money issued by Bankman-Fried’s better-known FTX crypto exchange.

The resulting story raised concerns about the stability of Alameda and FTX, and called into question Bankman-Frieds image as a white knight capable of backstopping struggling companies and as an “adult in the room” in a field notorious for fly-by-night outfits and scammers. The article debuted in a world where FTX was fast becoming a household name thanks to a marketing blitz featuring Larry David, Tom Brady and Gisele Bündchen.