By mid-2025, Europe’s crypto traffic didn’t look unusual. The totals were a bit higher than the quarter before, so on the surface everything seemed steady. The change only becomes obvious when the numbers are laid out month by month. Through the summer, traffic slowly drifted away from the biggest news sites where crypto usually gets seen. From July to September, those high-reach sites shed around 12.6 million crypto-related visits. There wasn’t a crash or a single moment where things broke. The drop just stretched quietly across the season. Outset PR has been tracking similar shifts across Asia , Latin America , and different parts of Europe. This report pulls Eastern and Western Europe together to see how that same pattern played out over the summer months. Quarterly Growth That Masked a Summer Slowdown Across Eastern and Western Europe combined, crypto-native publishers recorded 67.5 million visits over the quarter, up just under 4% compared with Q2. At face value, that suggests stability after a softer second quarter. But the quarter was front-loaded. July opened strong, with traffic close to 24 million visits. August stepped down. September dropped again, finishing the quarter a little above 20.5 million. By the end of September, crypto media across Europe was pulling in about three million fewer monthly visits than it had at the start of the quarter. The quarter ended up slightly higher than the one before it, but mostly because it got off to a stronger start, not because things improved as the months went on. Where the Losses Actually Showed Up The slowdown didn’t hit every part of Europe the same way. Eastern Europe was responsible for nearly all of the quarter-over-quarter growth, rebounding from a sharp Q2 dip and staying relatively steady through the summer. Traffic there fell only slightly from July to September, suggesting audiences continued to return even as discovery cooled. Traffic for the quarter finished roughly flat in Western Europe , but it softened steadily month by month. From July to September, crypto media traffic fell by close to 18%, with most of the drop coming from the markets that usually carry the most volume. Image sourced from Outset PR France, the Netherlands, and Germany were still among Europe’s biggest crypto media hubs by total visits. Along with Russia and Poland, those five countries made up over 70% of crypto-native traffic for the quarter, and they’re also where most of the summer slowdown showed up. Mainstream Reach Shrank Faster Than Crypto-Native Traffic The clearest losses appeared at Europe’s largest news publishers. News platforms with broad, non-crypto audiences that also cover crypto attracted roughly 1.15 billion visits over the quarter, compared with a much smaller share going to crypto-native sites. Only about a third of large news sites saw their crypto sections grow over the period. Most either flatlined or slipped, which is where that mid-summer traffic drop ultimately came from. For large publishers, those losses barely register at the company level but for crypto audiences, they matter. When crypto coverage fades at high-reach sites, it doesn’t just mean fewer clicks. It means fewer casual readers, fewer first-touch exposures, and fewer chances for crypto stories to reach people who aren’t already plugged into the space. Scale Still Decides Who Holds On Looking across crypto-native publishers, traffic remained heavily concentrated. Just 12 Tier-1 and Tier-1.5 outlets (those averaging more than 500,000 monthly visits) recorded nearly 58% of all crypto-native traffic, pulling in about 39 million visits between them. Tier-2 outlets, with monthly traffic between 100,000 and 499,000 visits, accounted for roughly one-third of total traffic, or 22.6 million visits. Tier-3 publishers added just under 10%, while the long tail of smaller outlets contributed barely over 1%. That imbalance is why some parts of the ecosystem feel every change in traffic more than others. Big media can lose visibility without immediate consequence while smaller and mid-sized outlets feel every change in discovery almost instantly. How Europeans Actually Found Crypto News The way readers arrived at crypto content helps explain why the summer slowdown showed up so clearly. Nearly 90% of crypto-native traffic came from just two sources: organic search (46%) and direct visits (42%). Everything else (referrals, social links, newsletters, paid traffic) made up the remaining sliver. Image sourced from Outset PR That leaves little room for cushioning when search demand cools or reader habits change. Referrals and social together barely cleared 10%, and paid traffic was close to zero. Big, multi-topic news sites have a different setup. Referrals alone made up over 12% of their traffic, giving them more flexibility when one channel softens. Crypto-native outlets don’t have that luxury. Where AI Began to Show Up In that setting, AI-driven discovery became visible, not because it was large, but because everything else slowed down. During Q3, AI tools sent about 510,000 visits to Europe’s crypto-native publishers, representing just 0.76% of total traffic. On volume alone, that’s negligible. Inside referrals, though, AI accounted for more than 13% of all incoming referral traffic. That share wasn’t spread evenly. Only 41% of crypto-native outlets recorded any measurable AI-driven visits at all. For most publishers, AI barely showed up. But among certain mid-tier and niche outlets, AI tools made up a sizable slice of referrals – sometimes 25–35%, sometimes 40–50%, and in a few cases over 60%. These were almost always outlets with smaller overall traffic bases, where even modest referral streams can look large in percentage terms. The common thread was content type. AI referrals clustered around evergreen analysis, explainers, educational material, and structured reference content, which are all formats that are easy for AI systems to surface when users ask questions. What This Quarter Actually Proved By the end of the summer, it was easier to tell how Europe’s crypto media really works. Traffic started thinning out first at the biggest, most visible sites, and it became clearer which publishers were still being found easily and which ones weren’t. With fewer spikes and a quieter flow of news, small things started to stand out. AI referrals didn’t suddenly become big, but you could actually notice them in the data in a way you couldn’t earlier in the year. Put next to Outset PR’s earlier research, the picture lines up. Crypto audiences are still around, but getting in front of them now depends much more on where content lives and how people usually arrive there. Disclaimer: This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.
