Crypto Press Releases: Nearly 60% Linked to Red Flag Projects
Headline: The crypto media machine is pumping more smoke than signal.
New analysis reveals a startling trend—close to 60% of cryptocurrency press releases are tied to projects waving serious red flags. That's not a minor blip; it's a systemic issue clogging the information pipelines.
The Noise Factory
Walk through the digital newsroom of any crypto outlet, and you'll find inboxes flooded. Announcements for "revolutionary" protocols, "game-changing" partnerships, and tokens poised for "moonshots." The sheer volume is a strategy—a fog of words designed to obscure the lack of substance beneath.
Decoding the Red Flags
So what separates the signal from the noise? The usual suspects: anonymous teams, vague roadmaps that never arrive, tokenomics that heavily favor insiders, and promises that sound too good to be true—because they always are. These releases aren't just bad PR; they're the opening act for potential rug pulls and vaporware.
Why This Flood Won't Stop
Simple economics. For a dubious project, a few thousand dollars for a press blast is a cheap customer acquisition cost. It buys legitimacy, pumps social chatter, and can temporarily move a thinly-traded chart. It's marketing with a ROI measured in suckers, not software. The whole cycle feels like Wall Street's pump-and-dump schemes, just with worse graphics and more emojis.
Navigating the Hype Storm
This isn't a call to ignore all news. It's a mandate for radical skepticism. Do the work the press release won't: audit the team's history, scrutinize the code (if it exists), and question every grandiose claim. Real builders build; they don't just broadcast.
The bottom line? In crypto, if a story sounds perfect, you're probably reading the press release. The truth is always in the commits, the community, and the cold, hard code—not the inbox spam.
Crypto projects bypass red flag checks by PR firms
According to Chainstory’s report, cryptocurrency media has enabled direct-to-consumer publication without editorial filtering. Niche crypto outlets are now “guaranteeing placement” for new projects and selling publication spots in networks of partner websites.
The barriers to publication for new projects have been lowered, compliance oversight is limited, and advertisers can push content live without an independent review. In about 2,893 crypto press releases distributed between June and November of last year, more than half of those came from projects with “classic red flags.”
Chainstory spotted several statements with warning signs, such as fully undoxxed teams, unrealistic token performance predictions and economics, and websites that are blatantly copy-pasted. The agency also confirmed some projects were outright scams after cross-referencing names from the press releases with blacklisted projects and scam alerts.
“Today, any crypto project with a few thousand dollars can buy its way onto a multitude of news sites. This practice has created a parallel news pipeline that operates outside the constraints of journalism. Because legitimate media outlets ignore minor product updates, obscure token launches, and overt marketing fluff, the crypto wires have become the primary channel for this content,” the group of researchers wrote in the study.”
Chainstory also noted that a misleading impact does not require that statements be completely false. Information in releases may be selectively framed, exaggerated, or presented without context, while distribution services claim to have performed some compliance checks and verified contact details.
However, wire service providers admit they cannot rigorously fact-check every claim in the thousands of press releases handled daily. One spokesperson said the responsibility belongs “on the clients” submitting the content, which the study called a “fox guarding the henhouse” scenario.
In September 2021, a fake statement claimed that Walmart would begin accepting Litecoin as payment. The announcement was published through a traditional newswire and picked up by several news outlets, causing Litecoin’s price to go up by about 30% within 20 minutes.
When Walmart finally denied the claim and the distributor retracted the release, LTC dropped in value by about the same percentage in half the time, Cryptopolitan reported.
“If a fake press release could dupe even Reuters and CNN, it’s easy to imagine how everyday retail crypto investors, who see press releases on aggregator sites or social media, might be misled by the steady stream of paid announcements that look like real news,” the agency explained.
Product and feature promotion top press release trends
Chainstory categorized the 2,893 releases by subject to assess which paid distribution channels most frequently promote. The largest segment, 1,417 releases or 48.98% of the total, focused on product or feature updates like new app functions, minor version changes, and platform changes that would not warrant a standalone news article.
Trading, listings, and exchanges accounted for 694 releases, or 23.99% of the sample. These mostly announced new coin listings or trading campaigns that, in isolation, would not usually receive major editorial coverage.
Token launches, tokenomics, and presales took up 405 releases, or 14.00% of the total volume. Events, conferences, and sponsorships racked up 174 releases, or 6.01% of the dataset.
Only 58 of 2,893 releases, about 2%, covered funding and corporate financial events, since this type of information is generally considered “newsworthy.”
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