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The best crypto and blockchain journalism and research from February & March, plus many more happy hours

Welcome back. February was a good one.

Mid-month, the ACJR descended on Denver for ETHDenver — and while the crypto faithful were debating falling prices and depressed conferences, we were doing what journalists do best: talking to people and drinking with them.

On February 27, we hosted a journalist and PR meetup at the Denver Press Club — one of the oldest press clubs in the country and, it turns out, an ideal setting for the kind of off-the-record energy that makes these gatherings worth attending. Older ink-stained reporters mixed with our crypto contingent to make this a well-rounded event.

Featuring — very happy guests at our ETHDenver happy hour.

It all came together in partnership with Coinage and PR Genius, and drew around 50 people from across the media and communications world. If you were there, you know. If you weren’t — keep an eye out for the next one.

We also had a great journalist happy hour at DAS in New York, brought to you again by PR Genius, Coinage, and now Impact3.

And then for our biggest event of the year — the annual ACJR journalism and research awards. This time held, in-person, during Consensus in Miami, and brought to you by Bitdeer.

And in smaller, but no less exciting news — the ACJR jobs board is back up and running. All those unemployed journos out there, run here for a skim.

And now, on to the newsletter!

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Top crypto journalism in February & March

Crypto’s True Believers Demand to Be Taken Seriously

Clara Molot, Vanity Fair

This very contentious piece kicks off our newsletter with the caveat that many loved to hate it — as a non-crypto-native journalist, did Clara get the crypto space right? How (not) subtly does the photography poke fun at its subjects? Do we all agree that Meltem is the fashion icon of crypto?

Inside the Binance Accounts Internal Investigators Say Helped Transfer More Than $1 Billion to Iran-Linked Entities: A 79-Year-Old VIP Chinese Trader and a Suspected Iranian Gold Smuggler

Leo Schwartz, Ben Weiss, Fortune

Long headline aside, this is much-needed investigation into just how Iran may have used Binance to move money — and the answer seems to show huge compliance gaps.

Justice Department Probes Iran’s Use of Binance to Evade Sanctions

Angus Berwick, Patricia Kowsmann, The Wall Street Journal

The WSJ’s scoop into how the DOJ is investigating how Iran used Binance as its own personal piggy bank.

(Newsletter text updated by Ben Weiss on March 27)

How to Win Slots and Influence People

Cecilia D’Anastasio, Olivia Solon and Leon Yin, Bloomberg

The opening to this piece reads: “Drake just needed some juice. In 82 minutes of online slots play, the Canadian rapper’s starting balance of $3.5 million worth of Bitcoin had dwindled to $422,355.” And it gets better from there.

Bitcoin Treasury Company Nakamoto to Acquire BTC Inc and UTXO in $107 Million All-Stock Deal

Francisco Rodrigues, AI Boost, Coindesk

A deal for Nakamoto, a Bitcoin treasury company, to acquire BTC Inc and UTXO Management has raised concerns about a related party transaction that diluted existing shareholders.

Crypto News Sites Take Down Posts Critical of Crypto PR

Maxi Tani, Semafor

Crypto publications have been known to cross some ethical lines over the years. The latest transgression: erasing content unfavorable to PR firms.

Crypto Exchange Kraken Fires Chief Financial Officer Ahead of Long-Awaited IPO

Ian Allison, Coindesk

CoinDesk’s long-time scoop machine looks under the hood of one of the industry’s biggest exchanges as it seeks a public listing.

TheDAO to Become New $220 Million Ethereum Security Fund

Laura Shin, Unchained

“For almost a decade, over 75,000 ETH involved in TheDAO has remained unclaimed. Now, Ethereum OGs and Vitalik are using it to create an ecosystem security fund.”

Top blogs, newsletters and op-eds

Cointelegraph’s 80% Drop Was Not a Market Cycle — The Data Makes That Clear

Maximilian Fondé, Outset PR

Unpacking a news leader’s spectacular decline in traffic.

Brock Pierce’s Dark and Disturbing Friendship With Jeffrey Epstein

Protos

Tether’s cofounder is all over the Epstein Files, as this comprehensive reckoning makes clear.

I Found Epstein. I Just Didn’t Realize It.

David Z. Morris, Dark Markets

If you haven’t read enough about Epstein already, DZM has quite a story for you.

And now — it’s research time.

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Top crypto research & policy in February & March

The Subtle Tension Between Staking and Onchain Credit Markets

Zack Pokorny, Galaxy Research

“Staking poses a real constraint on lending markets because it restricts the one thing they cannot function without: abundant and quality collateral.”

Curators of TheDAO’s $220M Set a Precedent for Using Owners’ Funds for Their Own Ends

Andrey Sergeenkov

“They took it upon themselves to decide how the money should be used, even though the entire idea of crypto was born as a response to a small circle of people managing other people’s money without their consent.”

Record-High Activity in Ethereum Network Caused by Address Poisoning Attacks

Andrey Sergeenkov

The researchers say $740K has already been stolen, plus Sergeekov expanded on his research later on here.

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Op-Ed

What journalists could learn from blockchain as they re-engineer the news industry

An op-ed by Brad Keoun

Mention the term, “decentralized media,” and you’re likely to get either blank stares or eye rolls.

Most normies would have no idea what that even is. A lot of veteran crypto journalists would say it’s been tried, and it never works. Several of the most notable attempts to create blockchain-based media projects have shuttered or faded fast. Most crypto websites are Web 2 — just regular websites hosted on centralized servers.

And yet, there is a group of optimistic journalists and technologists who are actively exploring whether decentralization, broadly defined, could address news-industry challenges that seem to be growing more acute by the day.

At its core, decentralized media refers to the idea that we could improve the quality of media and news content, and the reliability of distribution, by eliminating single points of failure and reducing reliance on centrally-controlled companies. The theory is that peer-to-peer networks, community governance and blockchain tools could help to address daunting issues like censorship, trust in media, AI slop detection, source protection, data privacy and even operational resilience (such as trying to get the news out in the midst of an Internet blackout or power outage).

Content monetization could also be a natural fit: Could blockchain-based payments help journalists earn a decent living? Newsletter platforms like Substack might be considered decentralizing technologies, since they lower the bar for entry, allowing individual journalists or small teams to reach audiences directly, without the infrastructure and support of a centralized news organization. (H/t to Brazil Crypto Report’s Aaron Stanley for this concept.)

Once you open the door to experimentation, the possibilities quickly get interesting. One project, Leviathan, has developed a decentralized news curation service, with its own mini economy where advertisers and sponsors pay for spots using a native crypto token, and rewards get paid out to contributors who submit relevant stories to share. The feed definitely leans degen, but it’s quite sharp, timely and voluminous. The advertising-inventory auctions have consistently drawn strong bids.

There isn’t much to lose from trying new ways of doing things, with so many newsrooms suffering severe financial challenges and reporters getting laid off en masse. Page views on news sites tumbled in 2025 as more user searches went straight to AI summaries, typically with minimal click-through rates and scant compensation, if any. Concerns are growing over alleged government censorship and media harassment, and the credibility of earnest news reporting is routinely called into question.

Many news outlets have tried to reduce their dependence on SEO and web hits, pivoting toward newsletters, short-form vertical video and shares on third-party social media platforms, while also embracing AI tools as a way to increase efficiency and productivity. Decentralization could be another path.

Rabbit hole

My own journey down the decentralized media rabbit hole began in early 2024, when I was managing editor of tech and protocols at CoinDesk, examining the system architecture of blockchain projects on a daily basis, and wondering why, as a crypto news site, we were still operating as a regular old web page — not eating our own cooking, one might say. Our page views were tanking, and I got the sense that it was not a priority of our new owner to invest in the newsroom, or to brainstorm ways of improving our distribution, or even to safeguard our editorial integrity for that matter.

So I quit my job, determined to explore the idea of building a decentralized media protocol. In December 2024, I founded Distributed Media Technologies Corp., a.k.a. Distro Media. It’s a registered corporation in the state of Texas, not at all decentralized at the moment.

That same month, I met Zack Guzman, founder of Brooklyn-based Coinage, which is technically a cooperative registered in the state of Colorado, but is effectively a decentralized news organization: You buy a non-transferrable NFT, and then you can weigh in on the editorial decisions in their closed Telegram channel and vote on various issues.

I mentioned to Guzman that at some point we should try to arrange a confab of builders in this space; he liked the idea, so along with a group of fellow planners, including the Decentralized Storage Alliance’s Valeria Kholostenko and ACJR’s Joyce Hanson, we co-organized a “Decentralized Media Summit” at ETHDenver in February 2025. The event drew more than 60 attendees, featuring speakers including Guzman, Civic Media’s Christine Mohan and The Defiant’s Cami Russo.

This successful gathering birthed the Decentralized Media Network Telegram channel, where about 150 members now collaborate daily in discussions over the future of news. (Please join us! It’s a mostly shill-free zone where all we do is talk about this kind of stuff. An invite link is here.)

Taxonomy in progress

Which brings me to this piece. We wanted to lay out a framework for thinking about decentralized media. As far as I know, there isn’t really a body of research literature about decentralized media; nor is there any sort of formal industry group nor any official list of relevant projects or technologies.

So, here in the spirit of making a start, is the taxonomy of projects so far. January Jones, a former journalist who is now co-host of Hot Topics at Edge of Show, provided valuable input and feedback. We would love to hear from interested readers or builders, or from actual researchers who want to go deeper.

Please note: that there are a lot of news tools in traditional media being developed to make use of AI’s data retrieval and analysis capabilities, or AI newswriting; a lot of these could theoretically be powered by so-called decentralized AI, where the LLMs are running on token-incentivized decentralized networks for GPU rentals and sharing.

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The list:

Content production:

• Decentralized newsrooms where members vote on editorial direction

• AI agents for newsgathering running on decentralized compute networks

• Decentralized data oracles updating reporters’ analysis

• AI fact-checkers, plagiarism and deepfake detectors to make sure it’s real!

• Open-source messaging to bypass data hosts and assure confidentiality

• Rewards incentivizing a community of users to share news, videos and tips

• Decentralized social media protocols

• A/V production powered by decentralized AI and verified onchain

Monetization:

• Crypto payments for subscriptions, individual article purchases, etc. Could be a distributed self-serve content marketplace, coordinated via AI agents

• A blockchain-based version of Google AdSense, or automated blockchain markets for self-serve sponsorship sales.

• Content provenance in which every piece of content should be verified with cryptographic proof.

Distribution:

• Articles as NFTs; important news inscribed on blocks

• Open-source MCP servers to let users read articles using whatever AI platform or agent they prefer

• Decentralized incentivized (token-based) content moderation

• Decentralized news agents for delivery and discovery, powered by decentralized AI

• Decentralized social-media management platform distributing to decentralized social-media platforms.
  

Other:

• Decentralized file storage and retrieval

• Privacy-preserving identity management to prove you are human and enabled to publish

• AI agents with decentralized identity to prove they’re eligible to retrieve articles from a decentralized news archive, and cover the cost with an authorized crypto wallet.

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Top crypto videos in February & March

Inside Finland’s Secret Bitcoin Mines

Joe Nakamoto

Joe travels to the literal Arctic to explore how Bitcoin mining is being used to heat homes.

How North Korean Hackers Stole $300M+ Via Telegram

Blockspace

As the title suggests, Blockspace breaks down how the Lazarus Group scams masses of crypto group chats on Telegram.

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Written by Molly Jane Zuckerman and Ben Schiller