As the net capitalization of the cryptocurrency market loses its value, so do metrics for the largest global crypto media outlets. Newcomers and “tourists” might be losing interest in tracking the latest developments in crypto when the “numbers don’t go up.” Meanwhile, some platforms manage to retain existing readers better than their competitors.

Top crypto media outlets: List

According to SimilarWeb, the largest and most credible website audience tracker, the following crypto medias led the charge in September:

1. Cointelegraph.
2. CoinDesk.
3. U.Today.
4. The Daily Hodl.
5. CryptoNews.
6. BeInCrypto.
7. AMBCrypto.
8. BitCoin.
9. Decrypt.
10. InsideBitcoins.

Amid a general decline, U.Today managed to close the gap with both of its competitors: it came 39% closer to CoinTelegraph and 70% closer to Coindesk.

Top websites on crypto: Key metrics by SimilarWeb

In Q3, 2024, the list of the 30 most visited websites on cryptocurrencies remained more or less stable. All of its participants were affected by the decline in interest in crypto, but there is a group that managed to mitigate the negative impact of uncertainty.

Audience

Q3, 2024, was not the easiest period for the cryptocurrency media segment. In total, the 30 largest market actors saw their audience plunging from 40.9 million to 34.4 million, which is equal to 15.9% decline in just two months (July-September 2024).

Also, it is obvious that the heavyweights of previous years are affected the most. To provide context, The Block, one of the oldest media platforms on crypto, lost a whopping 51.9% of the audience or roughly one million of readers. CoinPedia lost over 59% of its readers in the corresponding period.

Trends

Compared to them, U.Today, with its 11.7% losses, looks like one of the best performers. The platform remains a beacon of stability as competitors are struggling to retain strong Q1-Q2, 2024, metrics.

Some minor media outlets even managed to surge amid this painful season of decline on crypto markets. For instance, positive growth metrics were recorded by CryptoNews, CryptoSlate and Bitcoinist, but none of them managed to get closer to the one million monthly visit mark.

In this context, in August 2024, many outlets registered a notable metric spike, which was almost completely erased by a negative September.

First and foremost, it is U.Today that jumped from 3.4 million to four million monthly visits adding 17.6% in just 30 days. Amid smaller cryptocurrency media outlets, similar processes were registered in CryptoSlate, InsideBitcoins and Bitcoinist.

For the segment as a whole, therefore, we can indicate two groups based on the metric performance in dramatic Q3, 2024.

The largest media remain the dominant sources of content while they struggle with stability challenges. Smaller ones might even surge in such a context, but only to carve a small niche in the sphere. U.Today remains almost the only one that merges stability with impressive audience metrics in the long haul.

Top crypto websites: Reasons for leaders’ decline

Most likely, interest in global crypto media became volatile thanks to uncertain cryptocurrency market performance. Q3, 2024, was rather controversial for Web3 markets. In July, the launch of Ethereum Spot ETFs in the U.S. attracted a tiny fraction of liquidity that amassed its BTC-pegged analogue. It should be noted that, for many observers, this event could serve as a starting point for a new altcoin rally, but this never happened.

These painful processes pushed down the metrics of human interest into what is happening in crypto, blockchain and AI. As covered by U.Today previously, some indicators for crypto-related Google searches have not been so low since the 2021-2022 Crypto Winter, when the capitalization of crypto markets was three to four times lower.

As such, it is quite difficult for crypto media outlets to keep their audience metrics high given the bearish context of late Q3, 2024, and the extremely bearish outlook for the end of the year (QE prospects in China, recession fears in the U.S., political tensions in Middle East and so on).

Wrapping up

The top 30 largest cryptocurrency media outlets witnessed a drawback in audience metrics in Q3, 2024. The aggregated monthly visitor number for the platforms on the list declined from 40.9 million to 34.4 million, printing a painful 15.9% drop.

Amid this controversial context, U.Today and a number of smaller outlets managed to close the gap to leaders CoinTelegraph and CoinDesk. U.Today remains the third most popular cryptocurrency media outlet in the world for a number of months in a row.

The decline in the popularity of cryptocurrency media outlets can be attributed to the global macro uncertainty on crypto and fiat markets, which reduced interest in crypto-related searches for the general public.