Today, finding information on investment in the cryptocurrency space is often
a fairly random process. The major sources include:
● YouTube channels, of which some are affiliated with specific
cryptocurrencies. Most of these channels have between 5,000 and 25,000
subscribers. The quality of the production and the advice offered varies
widely.
● Industry news sites such as CoinDesk, The Merkle, Bitcoinist,
CoinTelegraph, and numerous others provide news stories on the overall
market direction, notable transactions and events, press releases,
individual currencies, and other developments.
● Research reports on new tokens such as Smith & Crown. Some of the
reports are more extensive than others and many tokens have no
objective reviewers. Much of the information in these reports at this
point in time appears to come from the issuer’s white paper and other
material provided by the token creators themselves.
● Bloggers, including personal blogs (often on Medium) and blogs on the
sites of Foundations, venture investors, and thought leaders. While
some of these writers offer valuable insights these blogs are not
centralized or organized in a way that makes it practical to effectively
consume such insights.3
● Exchanges and market data sites: Price and volume, bid and ask data
from exchanges including historical charts. Coinmarketcap.com,
Poloniex, Bittrex, and others. Some provide data via APIs (such as
coincap.io).
● Blockchain explorers, such as Blockchain.info and Etherscan.io, which
contain information on the concentration of holdings and the volume
and pace of transactions.
● Forum Posts. One of most potentially valuable sources of actionable
insights is the forums focused on individual currencies. These include
3An example is the writing on blockchain protocol economics of Joel Monegro at Union
Square Ventures. the Slack Channels of the Currency’s developer or foundation
themselves as well as discussion areas focused on crypto within various
open forums such as BitcoinTalk, Reddit and StackExchange.
● Steemit provides a useful source of advice and forecasts and may include
a compensation-feedback mechanism. However, their broad focus on
social sharing of information about "almost anything" leads to a more
diffuse stream of information.