So… how do you eat your crypto news?

In an industry where news updates are scaling as fast as the technology itself, how can we cut the content we consume into bite-size chunks that we can really chew?

How we forage for our daily news has changed. No longer a couple of broadsheets to choose from, we have an array spread across online platforms — amplified by an advent of social ‘shares’. Routine fake news stories within this burgeoning space mean we must be incredibly careful about what we’re reading.

Element Group is always on the lookout for up-to-date, quality and balanced cryptocurrency and blockchain technology reading material. With that in mind, where to start when gathering our daily news?

Meal planning

If you’ve been around the space for a while you are well-versed in the ever-reliable 3C’s: Cointelegraph, CoinDesk, and CCN. However, with so many other dedicated news portals popping up, and mainstream media institutions getting on the bandwagon, how can we get a balanced variety of decent crypto news?

Laura Shin talked on a panel at Consensus this year about the vast amount of sponsored content in a lot of crypto publications that haven’t been labeled clearly enough. It’s something that our team has also noticed, and we agree the reader needs more clarity on what content is being paid for and what is not.

Not only that, but cross-posting of news across an assortment of social media platforms (Twitter and Reddit to name but a few) as well as messaging apps (Telegram particularly) is another maze to navigate. How is it possible to aggregate all of these news updates and set them up in a palatable manner?

As avid readers of innovation in the space, Element would like to share with you a couple of our favorite crypto and blockchain tech news sources, and of course how we like to digest our daily updates.

For starters

Apart from the dedicated crypto and blockchain news portals mentioned above, there are a few more notable mentions (most have a subscription so you can get daily/ weekly highlights sent to your email) :

Despite what the title ‘Bitcoinist’ might suggest at first, but this news source not only covers bitcoin news, it provides updates on the latest altcoins and ICOs, as well as current blockchain tech developments.

News BTC is another portal that covers a range of bitcoin, altcoin, ICO, blockchain, and crypto related current news events. It also offers daily market price analyses, along with forecasts for investors and a variety of educational articles for crypto ‘noobs’.

CoinCenter is a research and advocacy center, that is focussed on investigating and highlighting global policy issues related to the cryptocurrency industry. Their contributors are often academics and experts in the field, and their intention is to promote sound public policy in the space.

Applancer may not be as prolific as other news portals in terms of quantity of content, but the quality is dense. As well as the usual, the publication offers community surveys and expert op-eds, as well as a feed of ICO reviews.

Main(stream)

More and more mainstream media institutions are reporting on crypto news with some even branching out to have dedicated teams reporting on all things blockchain. Forbes and Bloomberg are two such media companies — and they also have their own Twitter feeds dedicated to digital money.

TechCrunch and Radar Zero are two tech news publications who commit considerable coverage to blockchain technology and crypto news. CNBC’s Fast Money regularly reports on cryptocurrency price analytics as well as hosting interviews with industry leaders and innovators in the space.

Market Watch regularly reports on the state of crypto regulation and provides a price index on their website. It happens to be connected to the The Wall Street Journal, and the WSJ, much like The New York Times, has become much more prolific in terms of the blockchain tech news they cover.

Reuters, Finance Magnates and Business Insider are three institutional finance publications that are also increasing their cryptocurrency coverage.

Blog Salad

Medium is the go-to long-form writing space in crypto. One of the most influential thought leaders on there is, of course, Vitalik Buterin and his opinion has been known to make or break a project. Jimmy Song made some noise at Consensus this year and he is a big part of the educational side of the cryptosphere.

Ryan Selkis, aka TwobitIdiot, is the editor of Weekly Bits, a curation of posts from ‘somewhat intelligent crypto people’. Investor Spencer Bogart, aka Creme De La Crypto, writes in detail on the state of the crypto market. Phil Glazer’s ‘how-to’ posts — regularly featured on Hackernoon — are also worth a read.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong states that one of his key goals is to remain transparent when it comes to the workings of Coinbase as a business in the industry, and he does so through his blog. These writers also all have Twitter feeds worth following for daily industry insights. Speaking of which…

Just desserts

As our CEO Stan has said, crypto lives on Twitter, and if you’ve been around for a while you’ll have spotted that trend — in fact, it might be where you get your news. Here are just a couple of influencers in the space that we follow for their thoughts on current crypto and blockchain tech happenings.

Shapeshift CEO @ErikVoorhees regularly tweets regarding industry growth, effects of regulation and innovation within the crypto-space. Investor and analyst @TuurDemeester shares his research amongst other reflections on the inner workings of this nascent industry.

Lightning CEO @starkness is a big fan of educating the world on blockchain tech and discussing changes in the space. @lopp regularly offers his alternative views on decentralization in relation to security and cryptography.

@cburniske likes to look at the bigger picture and the philosophical side of cryptocurrency and blockchain tech innovation. @AriDavidPaul is one of the forefront thought leaders in the crypto space and @PeterLBrandt gives regular trader insight, focussed on educated those just entering the market.

FYI: check out Cryptoinfluencers — ‘an algorithmically generated list of crypto’s most influential people on Twitter’.

Reddit fours

While r/bitcoin and r/ethereum both have their eponymous subreddits which are essential to follow on Reddit, there is also a general r/CryptoCurrency subreddit which is popular with crypto traders and blockchain enthusiasts alike. r/btc and r/bitcoinmarkets are other decent subreddits to follow for bitcoin broadcasts, and r/ethtrader, r/CryptoMarkets, and r/altcoin are also favored by #hodl punters.

Not full yet?

A couple of extra mentions go to Laura Shin for her Unchained and Unconfirmed podcasts, Epicenter for their consistently quality interviews, and Ran Neu-Ner, aka Cryptomanran’s crypto market broadcasts. (It’s worth noting that these guys are all on Twitter too!)

There are a couple of Telegram channels that need mentioning, such as Cointelegraph’s ‘news in a minute’. It’s also the best place to get non-English news updates eg. Forklog’s Russian language channel. This list could be extensive, as several cryptocurrency communities congregate on Telegram.

As a final note: We’d recommend checking out a few of the one-to-one interviews conducted by the CoinDesk team at Consensus 2018 for a broad and varied view on all things crypto as of May 2018.

• Follow us on Twitter for a daily aggregate of all things blockchain tech and cryptocurrency.
• Subscribe to our website for all proprietary research, reports, and op-eds from Element Group.
• Any further news source recommendations? Let us know in the comments section below!

(Full Disclosure: Element Group sponsors both Ran Neu-Ner’s CNBC Cryptotrader broadcast and Laura Shin’s Unconfirmed podcast)