Last Updated: August 9, 2026
Editorial Policy
Crypto is an industry where a lot of what looks like journalism is paid for. Tokens get talked up by people holding them, "research" gets commissioned by the project it covers, and coverage gets quietly sold. Below are the rules we work by, so you can hold us to them.
01 Who we are and who owns us 02 What we stand for 03 How we verify 04 Sources 05 Money: what our writers can and can't own 06 Sponsors, ads, and the wall between them and us 07 What we label 08 Corrections 09 Right of reply 10 Covering markets 11 Artificial intelligence 12 Harm and privacy 13 Contributors and guest posts 14 Complaints 15 When this policy changes
Techiarena is an independent newsroom covering crypto, blockchain, markets, and founders, published by Ali Sher.
Ownership and funding: [Say plainly who owns Techiarena, who funds it, and whether any owner or investor holds crypto or has interests in businesses we cover. If they do, say what happens when we report on them. Vagueness here costs more credibility than an awkward fact does.]
Editorial decisions are made by the editorial team alone. No owner, investor, advertiser, sponsor or source has any say in what runs. When we cover anyone connected to our ownership or funding, we disclose it in the article, not just on this page.
Final editorial responsibility rests with Ali Sher, at contact@techiarena.com.
Accuracy over speed. A story held for an hour to check it beats a correction. Where we can't confirm something, we say so rather than implying certainty we don't have.
Independence. We report on advertisers, sponsors, event partners and the biggest players the same way we report on anyone. No relationship buys softer coverage — and none earns harsher coverage either.
Fairness. Anyone criticised in our reporting gets a real chance to respond first.
Transparency. We tell you where information came from, what we don't know, who paid for what, and what we hold.
Before anything publishes: every factual claim traces to a source we can name to ourselves, even when we can't name it to you. Numbers — prices, market caps, funding rounds, on-chain figures — get checked against a primary source, not against another outlet's write-up. Quotes are accurate and in context; we'll cut a filler word, never change a meaning. Anything from another outlet is credited and linked. A second person reads it before it goes live.
A project's claims about its own users, revenue, partnerships or audits are treated as claims, attributed as such, and checked independently where we can.
If a story matters and we can only partly stand it up, we may publish while saying exactly what's confirmed and what isn't. What we won't do is launder a rumour into a fact with phrases like "reports suggest."
We prefer sources named, on the record, with their interest in the story stated. Where a source has a position in what they're commenting on — a fund holding the token, a VC in the cap table, a competitor — we say so. "An investor in the project told Techiarena" tells you more than "a source familiar with the matter."
We don't pay for information. We don't fabricate quotes, sources or scenes. We don't plagiarise. We don't run press releases as news.
Anonymity is for people facing real risk — retaliation from an employer, a regulator, a well-funded actor — not for people who'd simply rather not be quoted. When we grant it, the claim needs corroboration from at least one more source with firsthand knowledge, and we tell you why anonymity was granted and what the source knows.
Pseudonymous sources are normal in crypto, and a long-standing pseudonym carries real reputational accountability. We verify the account's history and that our source controls it, we say in the piece that they're pseudonymous, and we apply the same corroboration standard as anyone else.
We don't unmask people. We won't reveal the identity behind a pseudonym without consent unless there's an overwhelming public interest — direct evidence of fraud against the public, for example — and that call is made by the editor and explained in the piece.
This is where crypto media usually fails, so we're specific.
Disclosure. Everyone who writes for us — staff, freelance or guest — discloses to the editor every crypto holding, token allocation, NFT, equity stake, advisory role or paid engagement in this industry, and updates it when it changes. Holdings over [USD 1,000] in a single asset are published on the writer's profile page.
You can't cover what you own. No writing about an asset, project or company you have a financial interest in, beyond incidental exposure to a major asset — and that gets disclosed in the article. Same goes for any company you've advised, worked for or been paid by in the last [12] months. Family or a close relationship at the company counts too; tell the editor and the story gets reassigned.
Trading rules.
No trading during working hours.
No shorting, futures, options or leverage on anything we cover.
Minimum [30]-day hold on any crypto or stock bought.
No trading ahead of a story. Trading on something you know we're about to publish is the most serious breach in this policy.
No shares in pure-play crypto companies for anyone covering the sector.
No freebies. No gifts beyond a t-shirt or a coffee. No tokens, NFTs, whitelist spots, allocations or merch from giveaways, contests, airdrops or ambassador programmes — this is the main way crypto media gets bought, so it's an absolute. An unsolicited airdrop is disclosed and not sold while we cover that project. Travel and conference tickets paid for by companies we cover get refused; where attendance is genuinely necessary and we can't fund it, we disclose it in everything that comes out of the trip.
Breaches can mean a public correction, removal of the byline, and the end of the working relationship.
Our commercial side doesn't see stories before publication, doesn't know what's coming, and doesn't contact writers about business relationships. Advertisers and sponsors get no advance notice of coverage and no right of review.
Nobody can buy coverage, kill a story, or soften one. If someone tries, we may report that they tried.
Sponsored content is written by the sponsor, never by our journalists. It's labelled "Sponsored" at the top and anywhere it appears, looks visibly different from editorial, and stays out of news feeds, "most read" and the newsletter unless labelled there too. We turn down sponsored content that would mislead readers about risk, returns or regulatory status.
Advertising we refuse: tokens actively raising money from the public, anything promising guaranteed or "risk-free" returns, unlicensed financial services, and anything we think is built to defraud people.
Affiliate links: [State whether you use them. If you do — where they appear, that a disclosure runs on the page, and that they never affect coverage. If you don't, say so. Not using them is the stronger position.]
Events: sponsored sessions are labelled as sponsored. Sponsorship doesn't buy a slot on an editorial panel.
You should never have to guess what you're reading.
News — reported, verified, attributed. Our opinion doesn't appear.
Analysis — reported facts plus our read of what they mean.
Opinion — the author's argument, labelled at the top, author named. Still has to be factually accurate.
Research — data-led work with the methodology and sources stated.
Sponsored — paid for and written by the sponsor. Not our journalism.
Press release — published substantially as issued. Not independently verified.
Developing — a live story still changing.
Guest opinion from someone with a stake in the subject is fine, as long as the stake is at the top of the piece and not buried in the bio.
We fix errors openly. We don't quietly edit a published claim and we don't delete stories to make a problem go away.
A correction gets a dated note on the article saying what was wrong and what's right. If the error goes to the central point of the piece, the note goes at the top and we post the correction on the same channels that carried the original — an error that travelled far gets a correction that travels as far. A clarification covers something accurate but easy to misread. A story that can't stand gets retracted and replaced with an explanation, not unpublished.
Headlines and social posts get corrected too.
Spotted an error? contact@techiarena.com with the URL, what's wrong, and what's right. We aim to reply within two working days.
If we're going to criticise you or report a damaging allegation about you, we tell you the substance of it and give you a real chance to respond before we publish — a genuine window and a genuine attempt to reach you, not an email fired off ten minutes before the story goes live.
If you don't reply, we say "X did not respond to a request for comment," and we can show that we tried. If your response arrives after publication, we add it.
Declining to comment doesn't stop a story that's otherwise sound and in the public interest.
What we publish can move prices, which brings a few obligations.
Nothing we publish is financial, legal or tax advice. We don't give price targets or tell you what to buy. Price predictions — ours or a source's — are labelled as forecasts, attributed, and come with whoever made them's interest in the outcome.
We honour embargoes once we've accepted them, and we don't accept an embargo that comes with conditions on how we report.
We don't amplify unverified market rumours. Where a rumour is itself moving the market and therefore news, we report it as an unverified rumour, say who's spreading it, and say what we couldn't confirm.
Coverage of a token, protocol or yield product states the material risks, including total loss. And nobody who knows a story is coming trades ahead of it — see 05.
A named human writes, verifies and is accountable for everything we publish. AI doesn't decide what we cover or what we conclude.
Where AI helps — transcription, translation, summarising public filings, sorting on-chain data, copy-editing — a journalist checks the output against primary sources first. AI output is an unverified draft, never a source. If an AI tool materially contributed to a piece, we say so on the piece.
We don't publish AI-generated text under a human byline as if it were reported. We don't publish AI-generated images of real people, events or places in a news context. And we don't put confidential source material into third-party AI tools.
We intrude on privacy only where the public interest genuinely outweighs it, and no further than the story needs.
A retail investor who lost money gets more care than a founder who sought influence. We think hard before naming an individual holder or tying a wallet address to a real identity — that can expose someone to theft, extortion or physical danger, and we often decide against it. Fraud victims aren't named without consent. We report scams and exploits so readers can protect themselves, without publishing a working recipe. Children aren't identified.
Pitch us at /submit-story. Everything in this policy applies to contributors exactly as it applies to staff, and we need your holdings and interests disclosed before we publish you.
We don't publish promotional content dressed as independent analysis, anything placed or paid for by a third party without disclosure, recycled content presented as original, or work substantially generated by AI and submitted as your own. Undisclosed paid placement means permanent removal and a public note.
Founder profiles and ecosystem listings are editorially chosen and can't be bought. [Confirm this is true — if any listing is paid, it has to carry a sponsored label.]
Email contact@techiarena.com with "Editorial Complaint," the URL, and what you say is wrong. We acknowledge within [2] working days and respond properly within [10]. If you're right, we correct it and tell you what changed. If you're not, we explain why. How loudly someone complains has no bearing on whether we correct. Whether they're right does.
We review this at least once a year, and whenever our ownership, funding or commercial model changes. The date at the top reflects the current version.