Depending on how plugged-in you are to the crypto space, you may be familiar with some or all of these happenings in the past 180 days:
These days I spend hours a day being “plugged-in” to crypto news. There is just so much to read, or listen to, or watch, or try. I have put together a guide that strives to be a comprehensive lay-of-the-land for crypto news.
I’m taking a top-down approach, starting with news sources that give a bird’s eye view, to the ecosystems on almost every social media platform. Each ecosystem is actually quite rich, so I try to do something to capture the Lay of the Land for each one.
General Crypto News
Follow the blockchain sections of financial publications
Forbes, CNBC and Bloomberg all have sections devoted to blockchain.
They offer very informed views on the blockchain industry, but in many ways present only the tip of the iceberg, explaining major price movements after the fact.
Here’s a fun graph to illustrate what I mean. Below are words from crypto headlines coming from the business pubs (Forbes, CNBC, and Bloomberg), vs headlines from crypto pubs.
You can interact with the chart, some interesting observations can be made — but the main point is that the crypto pubs cover a lot more detail.
[See interactive one here: https://observablehq.com/@coinfeeds/untitled]
Crypto publications
There are actually a lot of crypto publications, with new ones cropping up all the time, so which ones should you focus on? Well I tried to select them in an objective way, so here is a list of the most engaged crypto pubs, as measured by number of comments on crypto subreddits over a year. (I believe that comments are the best measure of engagement, not posts)
- bitcoinist.com
- bloomberg.com
- cnbc.com
- cointelegraph
- coindesk
- coinrivet.com
- cryptobriefing
- cryptoslate
- dailyhodl.com
- decrypt
- forbes.com
- beincrypto
- hackernoon crypto
- news.bitcoin.c
Crypto Twitter
CryptoTwitter is a fascinating community and a great source of information. You will find engaging insights, arguments, and memes. Here is a view of Crypto Twitter, divided into different groups.
Click on a group to zoom in: [interactive here: https://observablehq.com/@coinfeeds/crypto-twitter]
If you would like to follow these accounts, you can check the list here
Here is a list of general crypto subreddits. The ones listed here are active, and well moderated.
r/CryptoCurrency — The official source for CryptoCurrency News, Discussion & Analysis.
r/ethtrader — community-driven sub for Ethereum news, memes, investing, trading, miscellaneous market-related subjects and other relevant technology.
r/CryptoMoonShots — a place to discuss low market cap cryptocurrencies that might be potential moonshots.
r/CryptoMarkets — FOREX community for cryptocurrencies
r/Crypto_Currency_News — crypto sub for news
r/defi — sub devoted to all things around the development of decentralized finance
r/CryptoCurrencies — like r/CryptoCurrency, but with less strict moderation rules
Podcasts
Another great way to catch up on the markets while potentially multitasking is to listen to podcasts. There are some very high-quality ones in the crypto space, with great in-depth discussions on topical issues, or interviews with crypto founders.
- Unconfirmed and Unchained hosted by the crypto & blockchain journalist and former senior editor of Forbes Laura Shin
- The Delphi Podcast (Chain Reaction)—a podcast by the research portal Delphi Research, with quality interviews with some of the hottest projects
- Epicenter — a podcast that was talking about DeFi since 2013, before it was called DeFi, and hosted by a distinguished team
- Into the Ether — the official podcast of ETHHub that explores and Ethereum ecosystem
- The Ethereal Podcast — from the team behind the Ethereal Summit, and hosted by DefiDad
- Abel’s Abstracts — hosted by ETHGlobal organizer and Consensys alumni Abel Tedros, interviewing the builders of web 3.0 and defi
- Wyre Talks — biweekly interviews with top defi projects
- Blockcrunch — hosted by Spartan Capital Head of Research Jason Choi focused on serving investors interested in cryptocurrency and blockchain
- Venture Coinist — a podcast for crypto traders featuring interviews with industry leadersYouTube
There is also a large crypto YouTube scene. I did a pretty comprehensive search and found 173 English-language crypto YouTube channels. Here are the top 10 by subscribers. [You can see the complete list here]
- DataDash (364k subscribers) — daily price analysis and cryptocurrency news
- Ivan on Tech (289k subscribers) — daily videos with technical analysis for Bitcoin and Ethereum, and altcoin news
- Boxmining (218k subscribers) — videos 2–3 times per week with good tips on yield farming, and interviews with new projects
- aantonop (215k subscribers) — famous Bitcoin advocate
- BitBoy Crypto (199k subscribers) — speculative altcoins
- Crypto Daily (168k subscribers) — frequent videos and crypto content
- Lark Davis (167k subscribers) — a good coin picker
- The Moon (157k subscribers) — focused on Bitcoin news and Bitcoin price
- Crypto Zombie (149k subscribers) — Bitcoin, altcoin, and cryptocurrency news brought to you every day
- Suppoman (131k subscribers) — learn about crypto in a fun and entertaining way, also called Savage Cash
These channels are smaller but great for DeFi education:
- Finematics — animated, educational videos on the fundamental concepts in DeFi
- Chris Blec on DeFi — interviews and explanatory videos on DeFiCoin Specific News
If you are interested in following a specific coin, (especially if the coin is not a large-cap coin), you are better off following the coin’s own news channels and community. Almost every coin would have some of these channels:
a project twittera project blog, often on Mediuma community on reddita Telegram channela Discord channelSector Specific News
You might have noticed that there are thousands of cryptocurrencies out there. Here is a map of all the cryptos by sector — the size of rectangles correspond to the market cap.
Ok, so Bitcoin takes up a lot of the space here. To better visualize the altcoin landscape, here is the same map without Bitcoin:
The two largest sectors are Currencies, and Smart Contract Platforms, driven by Bitcoin and Ethereum. You can also see other emerging sectors such as Stablecoins and Decentralized Finance (DeFi). Other sectors pale in comparison in terms of market cap.
DeFi is bigger than it looks really, because many Stablecoins are minted because of DeFi, and it is built on top of Smart Contract Platforms. It is a sector that many are focusing on, and has lots of dedicated news sources:
Research and Analysis
Sometimes it can be a bit overwhelming to sift through all this information yourself. Whoever you are, it is worth keeping an eye on the people whose job it is to analyze and/or invest in crypto markets. What I love about crypto is that you can access a ton of high-quality, alpha-generating information for free just by being good at doing some internet research.
Follow blogs of research & analytics firms
These include the emerging crypto fundamental-research companies and on-chain analysis companies that sell their research to professional institutions and traders. Many of them also share insights for free to the community, which can be a great starting point.
- Santiment Blog— Santiment provides on-chain analysis and shares some of their insights on this blog
- Messari Blog — Messari combines a lot of crypto data all in one place. Their blog is a great place to get some insights into the space.
- Coinlist Blog — CoinList is a platform to for new coin listings, as well as to buy and track cryptocurrencies. They also do deep dives into the projects on their platform. This is a great way to learn about some of the newest and hottest projects.
- Token Terminal — Brings traditional financial metrics to crypto assets
- defipulse — vital stats on DeFi
- glassnode insights— on-chain analytics company that publishes weekly insights
- intotheblock — Blog of IntoTheBlock on-chain analytics
- whale-alert — what it sounds likeFollow VC blogs
Sometimes VCs share their musings, or the investments they make. In the non-crypto world, these are often private investments so there is not much the rest of us can do about it. But in the crypto world, you can often trade the token and join the coin’s community, and almost all of these VCs have Medium blogs!
Here are some blogs to follow:
- scalar-capitalrossbulatdcg-insightsPanteraCapitalthe-controlsequoia (not purely crypto)
- gv-library (not purely crypto)
- 1kx_capitaldraper-associates (not purely crypto)
- BlueYard (not purely crypto)
- angellist-blog (not purely crypto)
- SV Angel (not purely crypto)
- Fenbushifoundersfund (not purely crypto)
- fabric-venturesamino-insights (not purely crypto)
- hashed-officialscalar-capitall4-mediaecf-reviewContinueCapitalcollaborativefund (not purely crypto)
- dragonfly-researchplaceholdervcgcvp (not purely crypto)
- initialized-capital (not purely crypto)
- craft-ventures (not purely crypto)
- ElectricCapitalboost-vc (not purely crypto)
- ideas-from-bain-capital-ventures (not purely crypto)
- compoundvc (not purely crypto)
- fundersclub (not purely crypto)
- rre-ventures (not purely crypto)
- FidelityDigitalAssets (not purely crypto)
- KR18DecimalCapitalgloria_76070outlier-ventures-iogbicSVK_Cryptochainfund-capitalapollo-capital
Be Careful.
I must finish with a word of caution — because the flip side of being able to access so much good information openly, is that there are also a lot of scams. Please be careful. Some safety tips:
- Always DYOR (do your own research).If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.Make sure that you are following official sources of coins. The best way to join official social channels from the official website. Official accounts on Twitter, Telegram, etc. have a verified tick mark next to them — always check for this.Beware of strangers who message you. Official team members of projects would usually not direct message you first (many say so on their profile). By default on Telegram, anyone can add you into a group or as a contact without your consent. Disable this setting on your Telegram.Check URLs for phishing scams.
- Here are some tips.Keep your wallets secure.
- Here are some tips.
Well, this was a lot of content! You can follow all of the content above in convenient feeds on coinfeeds.io.
