# Breaking: A Crypto Media Crisis is Upon Us

Source: https://x.com/camirusso/status/2077828440095686741

## Summary

The author, who runs the crypto media company The Defiant, argues that crypto media is in a full-blown crisis and that the cause is structural, not just a bear market. Crypto venture funding fell to about $4 billion in Q1 2026, down 50% from the prior quarter, according to Galaxy Research, while AI startups captured roughly 80% of global venture funding in that quarter, per Crunchbase. The piece also points to companies building in-house newsrooms and funding influencers, and to a Gallup figure showing only 28% of Americans trust the media to report fully, accurately and fairly.

## Article

VC money is flowing to AI, trust in media is at record lows, and crypto is growing up.

I've been running a media company covering crypto since 2019. I've been through the ups and downs of the industry, so I know what a bear market feels like. This time around, it does feel different. As if something has structurally changed.

Starting in the second half of last year, at least for The Defiant, things got HARD. They got hard only on the sales front, though, which was frustrating, because our traffic and subscribers were (and are) near all-time highs.

That had never happened before, which makes me believe something more structural to both crypto and media is underway.

And just in case you haven’t been keeping up with the news about the news over the past few months:

Blockworks newsroom: Gone

DLNews: Gone (although maybe coming back under new owners?)

Solana Floor: Almost gone then rescued by Jito Foundation

DappRadar: Gone

Bankless: Layoffs

Unchained: Layoffs

Decrypt: Layoffs

Sherwood (RH content arm): Layoffs

Cointelegraph: Google debacle

And, yes, The Defiant: Layoffs 

So unless you have big backers (mostly exchanges), it hasn’t been pretty. I'd say we're in the middle of a full-blown crypto media crisis.

Here’s my take on what’s happening.

I’ll start with the broader market effects and then go over the more specific industry ones.

1. Bear market bullwhip

As we are all painfully aware, every blockchain-related company is at the whims of the market gods, and the gods have not been kind in recent months. Crypto has been trading sideways to down, macro is unstable with tariff wars first, actual wars next, then a more hawkish Fed, etc. Marketers don't like instability.

The pain compounds as it moves down the value chain. When token treasuries and balance sheets shrink, marketing is one of the first lines cut, and media that depends on sponsorship sits at the far end of that chain, absorbing an outsized share of the contraction.

But blaming crypto media's problems on a bear market is a cop-out. I think the following points have a stronger effect.

2. VC money is drying up and it's going to AI

What’s compounding with a bear market: VC investing in crypto is drying up. For The Defiant, DeFi protocols and chains are our bread and butter. We have the audience these companies and projects want to reach, we speak their language, we cover their news. It's a great match. But these companies are (generally) not getting funded.

Crypto venture funding fell to about $4 billion in the first quarter of 2026, down 50% from the prior quarter, according to Galaxy Research. And the money that is coming in is going to later-stage, revenue-generating companies.

Those VC dollars are instead going to AI companies. Investors who wanted to bet on the next big flashy thing, the bet that used to go to crypto, are now going to AI instead. AI startups captured roughly 80% of all global venture funding in Q1 2026, according to Crunchbase.

So, to connect the dots: Less VC money going into crypto projects means fewer marketing dollars going to crypto publications.

3. Crypto is growing up

Third, market-related driver: Crypto is growing up. The activity used to live in retail use cases: ICOs, NFTs, memecoin trading. Now the center of gravity has moved to stablecoins, tokenization, and real-world assets.

That new cohort wants to reach banks, fintechs, and asset managers, and it's increasingly oriented toward securing TradFi partnerships rather than speaking to crypto-natives. One bank passed on advertising with us because of the pepes in our thumbnails.

Those are the crypto market drivers. Now, addressing the media-specific drivers:

4. Trust in Media is at a Record Low

Only 28% of Americans say they have a great deal or fair amount of trust in the media to report the news fully, accurately and fairly. That’s a record low, and the first time Gallup has measured the figure below 30%. Five years ago it was 40%.

When two-thirds of the audience is skeptical of the messenger, companies start betting that their message will land better if it comes from somewhere esle.

That spending is instead going to:

5. Marketing Spend Going In-House and to KOLs

In-house. Companies are hiring content makers, video editors and writers more than ever. This is the so-called founder-led content.

Companies are increasingly running their own newsrooms instead of pitching journalists. Just a few of many examples:

a16z is the template everyone copies, a full media house producing The a16z Show, a daily newsletter with nearly 250k subscribers, and a "New Media" program it sells to portfolio companies as go-direct-as-a-service

Stripe runs Cheeky Pint

Sequoia has Crucible Moments and Training Data

Robinhood has Sherwood News, a genuine standalone newsroom.

Goldman Sachs runs Exchanges out of an in-house content studio

JPMorgan has the At Any Rate and Eye on the Market podcasts

Morgan Stanley puts out Thoughts on the Market daily

BlackRock has The Bid

Exchanges, companies, protocols and funds increasingly staff editors, producers and podcast hosts in-house.

KOLs. Companies are funding personalities, celebrities and influencers to carry their messages, on the belief that they're more authentic and believable.

Influencer marketing has gone from experimental line item to core ad budget in under a decade. Global spend reached roughly $32.5 billion in 2025, up from about $6.5 billion in 2019, and is forecast to clear $40 billion in 2026, according to Influencer Marketing Hub May report. Interestingly, spend is also shifting down-market, with nano and micro creators absorbing most of the growth while celebrity and macro tiers stay roughly flat.

Mini Rant on Founder-led Content and KOLs

What's ironic about the hate for media is that the very things that have eroded trust are the same things drawing audiences to KOLs. People distrust media because they view it as biased, compromised, full of conflicts of interest, and not transparent — all of which KOLs are even more guilty of. KOLs generally don't have newsroom standards of ethics and reporting. They're not bound by editorial rules to disclose whether content is paid.

And in general, they don’t. Just this week, the newsletter Prof G media quoted a Marketing Science study that analyzed more than 100 million brand-related posts on Twitter across 268 brands. It found that as much as 96% of sponsored posts were not disclosed. Results were similar for YouTube and Pinterest.

The lack of disclosure is worse in crypto, since there’s money on the line. Two weeks ago, the WSJ published a study on 1,100 Polymarket videos and found influencers were paid to post fake bets and gains, none of which were disclosed as paid ads. ZachXBT has been exposing various pump-and-dump schemes and scams that many of these players run. Because of all this, at least in crypto, I think trust in KOLs as a source of information is eroding and marketing dollars will not be well spent there.

On founder-led comms: I think it makes sense for companies to take control of their narrative, drive traffic to their product through content, and elevate their founders and team members with podcasts and thought leadership. Sure.

But the problem is twofold. One, very few companies can reach the same distribution a media company can. Also, the goal is usually to reach new audiences, but owned media mostly reaches a company's existing user base, so the gains are marginal. Two, the content produced is very close to propaganda: the company talking about itself or its own industry, the founder saying how great they are, on their own platform, with no pushback, fact-checks or balance. And of course, a podcast by Company A, will not have CEO of Competitor B as a guest. Audiences can see through that.

In my professionally biased opinion, good old-fashioned journalism, with all its faults, still offers the closest thing to trustworthy content. Of course, not all publishers are created equal, and sponsors and audiences are right to be more discerning.

What I disagree with

What I fully disagree with: the idea that "crypto media is struggling because crypto coverage has gone mainstream." Mainstream publications have only gotten marginally better at covering crypto. Most will only cover market stories and ignore onchain trends, technical upgrades, governance changes,  etc. In general (with very few, notable exceptions) they will mostly cover large price and regulation stories. Maybe a big funding round. And that’s it.

Crypto is still not mainstream. Stablecoins and RWAs are still a small drop in the ocean of traditional finance, and traditional financial media treats it that way. For audiences who want specialized coverage of what's actually happening in this industry, their best bet remains us — crypto media. And that’s worrying because as the bullet point above shows, crypto media newsrooms are shrinking.

Or do you think you'll get coverage on the latest points program, DeFi exploit, Vault launch, or governance drama on Bloomberg and the WSJ?

I think not.

What to do about it

Briefly, at The Defiant, we're going where new audiences and advertisers are (hello Converge!), we're leveraging AI (agents can in fact write some good, fast copy), we're experimenting with new formats (livestreams, documentaries), and we'll grow our subscription-based revenue (paywall, pay-per-article is coming).

Something else to note, when so many newsrooms are struggling, it may be a good time to think about consolidation.

It's worth a separate post to expand on all this but I do think there's opportunity here to re-think how newsrooms are run, to re-think crypto coverage, and even (hopefully) to recast the media business model itself.

What we're not doing

At The Defiant, we're not giving up on high-standards journalism for crypto. If anything, everything I've laid out here makes me more convinced of why we exist. When VC dries up, when trust collapses, when every company becomes its own propaganda machine and every influencer is for sale, when the media graveyard gets bigger, the value of an independent newsroom only goes up.

## Comments

**mishaderidder.eth**: Luckily no one can get laid off at Kiwi News! 

**timdaub.eth**: hahaha, thankfully, yes! 

It‘s funny how really everything in crypto is just wittering away. It was all just VC pumping 😭