cryptonist

Original research · Published monthly

AI Citation Index

When someone asks an AI assistant which crypto exchange to use, or which wallet to trust, a handful of brands get named and the rest do not. We measure which ones — every week, across five answer surfaces, on a fixed set of the questions buyers actually ask.

Each month the results publish as a numbered edition. Every edition stays live at its own permanent URL, so the record is comparable over time rather than overwritten.

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  • 2 Sectors measured Exchanges and wallets
  • 18 Brands tracked Ranked, not sampled
  • 100 Buyer questions Fixed set, asked weekly
  • 5 AI answer surfaces Named, not counted

Why it exists

Search used to send traffic. Increasingly it sends an answer.

An assistant that names three exchanges has made a shortlist on the buyer's behalf. Being absent from it is not a ranking problem that shows up in a rank tracker — it does not show up anywhere. This index is the measurement: who gets named, in which category, on which surface, and how that moves month over month.

The rear of a server rack, cabling bundled and routed across a column of rack-mounted machines

Surfaces measured

  • ChatGPT with web search
  • Gemini with Search grounding
  • Perplexity Sonar
  • Google AI Overviews
  • Google AI Mode
How this is measured

What gets ranked

Two sectors, each with its own set of 50 questions and its own nine contenders. Narrow on purpose: a sector asked 50 ways produces a number worth defending, where the same budget spread across six produces six that need caveats.

Index scope by category. Counts are brands tracked, not results.
Category Brands Questions
Exchanges 9 50
Wallets 9 50

Editions

The first edition has not published yet.

Measurement runs weekly and an edition needs a full cycle of it before there is anything worth publishing. The scope above is fixed and the question sets are written; what is missing is the data, and the only way to get it is to wait for it.

Read the methodology · Including what this measurement cannot tell you