Data and research on crypto
Original measurement, stated methodology, named bylines. No press releases, no affiliate rankings.
Markets
Why crypto brands cannot buy their way to visibility
A MiCA licence passports across the EEA. Google's advertising permission does not — and comparison destinations cannot advertise at all, licence or no licence.
The index
Which crypto brands do AI assistants actually name?
Every week we put the questions crypto buyers ask to ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google's AI surfaces, and record which brands come back. Published monthly, every edition kept live.
See what is measured- 18brands tracked
- 100buyer questions
- 5answer surfaces
Data
The sector's figures, dated and explained
Reserve, supply and value-locked tables for 388 exchanges, stablecoins, chains and protocols, and a classified record of 1,293 hacks. Every page says what its number measures and what it leaves out. Snapshot from DefiLlama, data as of 3 October 2026.
Browse the data- Exchange reserves 36
- Stablecoins 48
- Chains 79
- DeFi protocols 225
- Hacks 1,293
More from Cryptonist
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Exchanges
What a first crypto purchase actually involves
The app matters less than the four decisions inside it — which surface you buy on, which rail you fund with, where it settles, and what you record.
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Exchanges
The fees you actually pay on a crypto exchange
A headline trading rate is one of at least five costs in a round trip. The spread is usually the largest, and it is the one no fee page shows you.
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Exchanges
Exchange or self-custody: what you are trading
Not safe against unsafe. The real trade is recourse against control, and the failure modes on each side are shaped completely differently.
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Exchanges
What to compare when choosing between crypto exchanges
Five questions in the order that matters, a leaving test worth running before you need it, and why expert recommendations are the weakest signal available.
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Wallets
Hot wallet, cold wallet, and the line between them
A hardware wallet does not hide your key better. It moves the signing off a connected computer — which defeats one attack completely and another not at all.
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Wallets
What a MetaMask recovery phrase actually controls
It is not a password, and it does not back up everything you can see in the extension. What it covers, what it misses, and what to do if it leaks.
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Wallets
What actually separates one crypto wallet from another
There is no best crypto wallet, but there is a right list of things to compare — and most of the differences people weigh are not on it.
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Exchanges
Deep liquidity and a long coin list pull against each other
Liquidity is order-book depth at the size you trade, not reported volume. Why breadth costs depth, and why staking yields are a credit product.
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Explainers
Pepe coin, and what a meme coin actually is
PEPE says outright that it has no intrinsic value or expectation of return. What that leaves holding the price up, and what the 2023 multisig theft showed.
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Exchanges
What a regulated crypto exchange is regulated for
In most countries it means registered for anti-money-laundering supervision — a rule that protects the financial system from you, not you from the exchange.
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Exchanges
What proof of reserves actually proves
A Merkle-tree attestation shows assets at a moment. Without liabilities it says nothing about solvency — and most of them stop at assets.
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Wallets
Seed phrases, private keys and passwords are not the same
Three different things, routinely treated as one. The confusion is not academic — it is how people lose funds they believed were protected.
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Wallets
What you are agreeing to when a wallet connects to a site
Connecting reveals an address. Approving grants spending power that outlives the visit. The difference is where most self-custody losses actually happen.
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Markets
What wash trading is, and why volume can be invented
Exchange volume is self-reported. In 2019 Bitwise showed the SEC that ~$6bn of daily bitcoin volume was really $273m — and the incentive behind it persists.
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Wallets
Why a wallet works on one chain and not another
One seed phrase can hold keys on every chain at once. What stops a wallet supporting them all is signatures, account models and address formats.
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Wallets
Your first crypto wallet, and what it is actually for
The first wallet is a training instrument, not a vault. Why they are all free, why that matters, and the three setup decisions that are hard to undo.
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Wallets
How crypto wallets actually fail
Asking which wallets have been hacked assumes the software is what breaks. Usually it is not — here are the failure modes that actually cost people money.
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Exchanges
What happens to your crypto when an exchange fails
Insurance covers theft, and a company failing is not a theft. What segregation, deposit insurance and a public listing actually get you, and what they do not.
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Explainers
What is a stablecoin, and what holds the peg
A stablecoin targets a value rather than guaranteeing one. What holds each kind of peg, what a depeg really is, and why EU rules forbid paying interest on one.