BeInCrypto: claims to be "the only ad-free media in the blockchain industry," at $17.3M in revenue.
We're continuing our Crypto News Platforms series with BeInCrypto, founded in 2018 by CEO Alena Afanaseva, now a top-three crypto news platform reaching over 7 million monthly readers across 26 languages. Real, disclosed genuine strengths: massive multilingual scale, membership in the external Trust Project journalism-standards initiative, and a distinctive claim to be "the only ad-free media in the blockchain industry." What we don't think should be set aside: we could not fully reconcile that ad-free claim with BeInCrypto's reported $17.3 million in 2026 annual revenue, and several of the most positive public reviews we found were authored by PR-industry professionals describing direct business relationships with BeInCrypto's editorial team. We weighted all of it below.
Our take, up front: BeInCrypto is a crypto news and data platform founded in 2018 by Alena Afanaseva, who serves as CEO, operating today with a reported multilingual newsroom of over 150 professionals across 50+ countries, producing content in 26 languages. Real, disclosed genuine scale: over 7 million monthly readers, a self-described top-three position among crypto news platforms, and $17.3 million in reported 2026 annual revenue. Real, disclosed external validation: BeInCrypto is a member of the Trust Project, an external journalism-standards initiative, a real, disclosed positive signal distinct from a self-authored policy document. Real, disclosed distinctive claim we want to examine directly: BeInCrypto describes itself on its own homepage as offering "the only ad-free media in the blockchain industry," a genuinely different stated business model than every other outlet we've reviewed in this series, all of which rely on advertising in some form. What we don't think should be set aside: we could not fully reconcile how $17.3 million in annual revenue is generated without traditional advertising; BeInCrypto maintains an extensive network of paid media-partnership relationships with over 100 industry events, including TOKEN2049, EthCC, and Paris Blockchain Week, a real, disclosed structural relationship common across the sector that may explain some of this gap. Real, disclosed sourcing concern we want to flag directly: several of the most positive public reviews we found were explicitly authored by PR-industry professionals describing direct, ongoing business relationships with BeInCrypto's editorial team, for example one reviewer identifying as "a PR agency" that works "with BeinCrypto regularly," a real, disclosed conflict in the review sourcing itself that we don't think should be cited as neutral, disinterested validation. Real, disclosed industry recognition: BeInCrypto won the "Crypto Press" category at the 2025 Blockchain 100 Award, an award hosted by Binance, a major crypto exchange, during Binance Blockchain Week, a real, disclosed detail worth noting precisely given the recognition's source. Real, disclosed heavy volume of sensationalized micro-cap content, for example headlines touting a low-liquidity token's "over 45,000%" 24-hour gain, a pattern common across the sector rather than unique to BeInCrypto. We weighted all of it below.
Real, disclosed named founder and CEO (Alena Afanaseva) and real, disclosed membership in the Trust Project, an external journalism-standards initiative. Real, disclosed distinctive claim: describes itself as "the only ad-free media in the blockchain industry." What tempers this: we could not fully reconcile a reported $17.3 million in 2026 revenue without traditional advertising, and BeInCrypto maintains an extensive network of paid media-partnership relationships with over 100 industry events, a real, disclosed structural relationship common across the sector. Real, disclosed sourcing concern: several of the most positive public reviews we found were authored by PR-industry professionals describing direct business relationships with BeInCrypto's editorial team.
Pros
- External Trust Project membership offers a real, disclosed independent journalism-standards signal
- A distinctive "ad-free" claim differs from every other outlet's stated business model in this series
Cons
- The ad-free claim wasn't fully reconcilable with the disclosed $17.3M revenue scale
- Positive public reviews we found were authored by PR agencies with direct business ties to BeInCrypto
Real, disclosed genuine scale and institutional recognition: a top-three crypto news platform reaching over 7 million monthly readers, and winner of the 2025 Blockchain 100 "Crypto Press" award. What tempers this: a real, disclosed pattern of sensationalized micro-cap coverage common across the sector, and we found no independently corroborated major investigative scoop attributable to BeInCrypto.
Pros
- Genuinely massive, real, disclosed reach (7M+ monthly readers) as a top-three crypto platform
- Real, disclosed public industry recognition via the 2025 Blockchain 100 award
Cons
- Sensationalized micro-cap headlines are a recurring content pattern
- No independently corroborated major investigative scoop was found in our research
Real, disclosed named founder and CEO (Alena Afanaseva), with real, disclosed basic corporate registration detail (MVF Global Ltd., London). What tempers this: we found limited disclosed detail on BeInCrypto's broader ownership or investor structure beyond a listed pre-seed funding round, and a third-party rating service's specific "Ownership Data" assessment of BeInCrypto was itself paywalled and inaccessible to us in our research.
Pros
- A named founder and CEO with real, disclosed basic corporate registration information
Cons
- Broader ownership and investor structure beyond a pre-seed round were not clearly disclosed
Real, disclosed genuinely broad, multilingual operation: content in 26 languages produced by a reported 150+ professionals across 50+ countries. Real, disclosed diversified content ecosystem: Learn (education), Newsletters, Jobs Board, InMarkets (data/analysis), and Rankings (independent pricing data).
Pros
- Genuine, disclosed multilingual reach across 26 languages and 50+ countries
- A diversified content ecosystem spans education, data, and career resources beyond news
Cons
- Speculative micro-cap coverage occupies a meaningful share of visible daily output
Real, disclosed genuinely accessible core content, with a distinctive, real, disclosed "ad-free" reading experience if the claim holds as stated.
Pros
- Free core content with a distinctively cleaner, ad-free reading experience as claimed
Cons
- We could not independently verify the ad-free claim held consistently across all content
Real, disclosed genuine revenue scale ($17.3 million in 2026) and diversification across data partnerships, event media-partnerships, and premium content tiers. What tempers this: the specific mechanics behind the "ad-free" claim at this revenue scale were not fully clear in our research, and the extensive event-partnership network with exchanges and other industry players carries a real, disclosed soft-conflict risk common across the sector.
Pros
- Revenue is genuinely diversified across data partnerships, events, and premium tiers
Cons
- The specific mechanics reconciling the ad-free claim with disclosed revenue scale remain unclear
Real, disclosed genuinely distinctive additional products: a Learn education section, a Jobs Board, InMarkets data and analysis, and independent Rankings.
Pros
- A genuinely broad, real, disclosed set of additional products beyond core news publishing
Cons
- Some extras (Rankings, InMarkets) sit adjacent to the same monetization questions noted above
Read the news directly, and treat "ad-free" as a claim worth verifying rather than taking at face value.
Given the real, disclosed gap between BeInCrypto's stated ad-free model and its reported revenue scale, look for how specific articles are actually monetized, sponsored posts, event partnerships, data licensing, before assuming a given piece carries no commercial relationship to its subject.
A genuinely large, multilingual operation built on a headline claim we couldn't fully verify.
We want to give BeInCrypto real credit for scale that's hard to fake: 26 languages, 150+ contributors, 7 million monthly readers is a genuinely substantial operation, and Trust Project membership is a real, external signal rather than a self-graded one. But "the only ad-free media in the blockchain industry" is a specific, falsifiable claim, and at $17.3 million in reported revenue, we think it deserves more scrutiny than we could give it from public information alone. Somewhere in that revenue is coming from somewhere, and an extensive network of paid event partnerships is one honest possibility that isn't quite the same thing as no advertising at all. We also want to be direct about something we noticed in our own research: some of the most glowing public praise for BeInCrypto's editorial team came from PR agencies describing paying clients they represent to that same team. That's not proof of anything improper. It's also not the kind of endorsement we think a reader should mistake for an independent reader's review, and we'd rather flag it than quietly cite it as support.
The scorecard above is deliberately general. Whether BeInCrypto is right for you depends heavily on which of these you already are.
The non-English-speaking reader who wants broad crypto news coverage in one of BeInCrypto's 26 supported languages
This is exactly where BeInCrypto's real, disclosed multilingual scale delivers genuine value few other outlets in this series match.
The reader who treats "ad-free" as one data point to verify rather than a fully settled fact
Given the real, disclosed gap we found between that claim and disclosed revenue scale, this specific skepticism genuinely matters here.
The reader interested in BeInCrypto's Learn, InMarkets, or Rankings products as supplementary data tools
These are real, disclosed, genuinely broad additional products worth evaluating on their own separate merits.
Anyone citing BeInCrypto's own public customer reviews as independent proof of its editorial trustworthiness
A real, disclosed sourcing concern, PR-agency-authored praise describing paying client relationships, makes this a poor fit for that use.
The scorecard covers the headline judgment calls. These four tables cover the specifics we didn't want to bury in prose; the "ad-free" claim examined precisely, the sourcing concern in our own research presented directly, the growth timeline, and how BeInCrypto compares to the rest of this series.
The "ad-free" claim, examined precisely
| What we found | |
|---|---|
| The claim | BeInCrypto's own homepage states it is "the only ad-free media in the blockchain industry" |
| Reported revenue | $17.3 million in 2026, per a third-party business database |
| A plausible explanation | An extensive network of paid media-partnerships with 100+ industry events (TOKEN2049, EthCC, Paris Blockchain Week) |
| What we couldn't confirm | Whether "ad-free" excludes sponsored content, data licensing, or event-partnership revenue specifically |
We're not asserting the claim is false; we simply couldn't verify precisely what it excludes, and a claim this specific deserves a precise, verifiable definition rather than one we had to infer.
The sourcing concern, presented directly
| What we found | |
|---|---|
| Review 1 | A self-identified PR professional who has "collaborated with BeInCrypto's editorial team" praises its standards |
| Review 2 | A self-identified PR agency states, "We work with BeinCrypto regularly," praising the team |
| Why this matters | PR agencies with paying clients seeking coverage are not neutral, disinterested reviewers of an outlet's editorial team |
| Our response | We flagged this directly rather than citing these reviews as independent validation of editorial quality |
We think this is worth surfacing precisely because it's easy to miss; positive testimonials read as independent praise unless a reader notices the reviewer's stated professional relationship to the subject.
The growth timeline
| Date | What happened |
|---|---|
| 2018 | Alena Afanaseva founds BeInCrypto |
| Ongoing | Expansion to 26 languages, including editions for established financial centers (Japanese, Korean, Dutch, Italian, Nordic languages) |
| 2025 | Website infrastructure upgrade; wins "Crypto Press" at Binance's Blockchain 100 Award |
| 2026 | Reports $17.3 million in annual revenue; over 7 million monthly readers |
This is a genuinely substantial, real, disclosed growth trajectory; we think its scale is precisely why the specific mechanics behind the ad-free claim matter enough to examine closely rather than accept at face value.
BeInCrypto vs. the rest of this series
| BeInCrypto | CoinDesk | The Block | Decrypt | Bankless | U.Today | Bitcoin Magazine | CoinGape | Blockworks | Coin Bureau | The Defiant | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Core disclosed issue | Unverified "ad-free" claim; PR-sourced positive reviews | Owner-ordered article removal (2024) | CEO's secret $43M in loans (2021-2022) | Sponsor-branded rewards; client-services arm | Venture arm's direct token holdings | Blended promotional content, no clear policy | Media, venture fund, and treasury company unified under one CEO | B2B authority-building adjacency; thin ownership detail | Editable podcast interviews; pay-to-speak conferences | Category-standard affiliate-link monetization | Current business-sustainability pressure |
| Our score | 53.75/100 | 50.0/100 | 51.75/100 | 63.0/100 | 45.25/100 | 37.75/100 | 42.75/100 | 55.75/100 | 59.25/100 | 58.75/100 | 66.0/100 |
BeInCrypto's mid-pack score reflects real, disclosed credit for massive multilingual scale and external Trust Project certification, tempered by an unverified headline business-model claim and a real, disclosed sourcing concern in the positive testimony we found.
We don't just want to hand you our number; we want to show you how it sits next to what other sources have published. We're flagging directly that customer-review-style sentiment toward BeInCrypto runs considerably warmer than our own score, and part of that gap traces to the exact PR-sourced review concern we flagged directly in our own research.
Our score lands moderately below the aggregated industry average; that average is pulled upward by customer-review-style sentiment we found reason to treat cautiously, while media-literacy-focused commentary skeptical of the "ad-free" claim runs meaningfully below our own figure.
| Source | Score | Type |
|---|
Scores compiled by our editorial team from publicly available reviews as of August 2026. "Editorial estimate" means the outlet didn't publish a single numeric score, so we converted their published verdict and sentiment into a comparable 100-point figure. Verify current figures directly with each source before citing them elsewhere.
Alena Afanaseva founded BeInCrypto in 2018 and serves as CEO. We found limited disclosed detail on the company's broader ownership or investor structure beyond a listed pre-seed funding round and basic corporate registration (MVF Global Ltd., London).
BeInCrypto's own homepage states it is "the only ad-free media in the blockchain industry." We could not fully reconcile this claim with a reported $17.3 million in 2026 revenue, and we think it deserves more specific verification than we could give it from public information alone.
The Trust Project is an external, independent journalism-standards initiative. BeInCrypto is a member, which is a real, disclosed positive signal distinct from a self-authored editorial policy, though membership standards can vary across initiatives.
26 languages, produced by a reported multilingual newsroom of over 150 professionals across 50+ countries, reaching over 7 million monthly readers.
Some of the most positive public reviews we found were authored by self-identified PR-industry professionals describing direct, ongoing business relationships with BeInCrypto's editorial team. We think readers should know this before treating that praise as independent validation.
Yes. BeInCrypto won the "Crypto Press" category at the 2025 Blockchain 100 Award, an award hosted by Binance, a major crypto exchange, during Binance Blockchain Week.
A Learn education section, a Jobs Board, InMarkets data and analysis, and independent Rankings, alongside its core news coverage.
Core content is free. Some third-party rating services offer premium tiers to reveal additional factuality and ownership assessments of BeInCrypto specifically, separate from BeInCrypto's own site.
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