Earlier this month, NPR ran a headline, “Why there's so much excitement around a cryptocurrency called stablecoin.” If you want to understand where crypto stands with legacy media in 2025, start there. The piece was a basic primer on a decade-old innovation that settles nearly $27 trillion annually, surpassing the combined annual transaction volume of Visa and Mastercard. Stablecoins are not new, and neither is the media’s incuriosity about them. It was the most recent proofpoint that in the eyes of legacy media, crypto remains suspended in a state of perpetual novelty. The gap between crypto’s market performance and the stories told about it reveals a deeper communications failure. It keeps the public in the dark about transformative advances in a $4 trillion industry. Today, Bitcoin is up over 110% year-to-date. U.S.-listed Bitcoin ETFs have attracted over $50 billion in net inflows, marking one of the most successful ETF launches in history. Global crypto adoption has surpassed 600 million users, with countries like Turkey, Argentina, and the UAE reporting that nearly one in three adults own crypto. Consumer products are also taking off. Decentralized prediction market Polymarket has seen over $100 million in volume on the 2024 U.S. election alone, and is reportedly on track for a $1 billion valuation. Beneath the surface, on-chain rails are quietly powering a new global financial infrastructure. However, mainstream media narratives have failed to keep up. According to a report by Perception, while Bitcoin posted record performance in Q2 2024, The Wall Street Journal published just two articles on Bitcoin and crypto. The Financial Times and The New York Times, respectively managed only eleven, compared to 141 by CNBC and 65 by Barron’s. This lack of coverage in top financial outlets means that one of the most important financial and technological innovations of our time is not reaching investors, policymakers, and the public. The gap between market signals and coverage in crypto is an existential liability and has dire political, regulatory and cultural consequences. For many Americans, crypto is still a spectacle – seen as volatile, unserious and untrustworthy. Legislation is based as much on perception as it is on principle. Markets respond to narratives as much as numbers, and voters form opinions through headlines. This isn’t just a branding problem, but a structural issue rooted in how Bitcoin and crypto has let the world tell its story – and often, get it wrong. The industry did not just lose public trust during the last cycle. It lost the plot. In pursuing mass appeal, the industry opted for spectacle over substance: with stadium naming rights, Super Bowl ads, and celebrity campaigns. It borrowed legitimacy, rather than cultivating its own. When FTX, BlockFi, and Celsius imploded, the public had no coherent story to fall back on. Today, Bitcoin’s success is grounded in real market signals – not projections, ideals, or hypotheticals. The data shows that crypto is flourishing. Like any serious asset class, its credibility is proven by the numbers. The role of crypto communications now is not to spin a story, but to use and interpret the one that the market is already telling. The obstacles to clearer coverage are persistent. Stories highlighting “Presidential” meme coins cast the technology as a political toy. Bitcoin and crypto’s involvement in the 2024 election further embedded it in partisan culture wars and cast it as a partisan talking point with mainstream media. Like the internet, Bitcoin has no ideology or politics. Its origins proposed a system built not on trust, but on math, code, and consensus. It emerged post-financial crisis, when confidence in central institutions was shaken but intact. Gradually, the 2016 election, the pandemic, and heightened focus on wealth inequality deepened public skepticism. Into that erosion, Bitcoin proposed an alternative: a system built not on trust but on the values of the internet and modern ideals of self-determination, global access and direct ownership. Crypto is established and legitimate enough to tell its own story. It doesn’t need a rebrand or more flash. It needs facts grounded in what the market has already shown to be true. This will not be the work of a single campaign or stakeholder. It requires the long and dedicated work of narrative stewardship by builders, users, and communicators that can own and execute on telling our own stories. If we don’t, others will. And they will keep getting it wrong.
