Coinbase nixed news feature amidst traffic decline for crypto news
Add Axios as your preferred source to
see more of our stories on Google.
Coinbase, the U.S.'s largest crypto exchange, quietly removed the newsfeed from its app a few months back.
Why it matters: Crypto media publications are suffering traffic woes, likely for a lot of the same reasons mainstream sites are — but the change at Coinbase removed a constant source of eyeballs that the industry's media could count on.
Between the lines: "From time to time we make updates to the design of the app based on user engagement," a spokesperson from Coinbase explained, saying the news feed feature was dropped in March.
The big picture: Crypto news is a vulnerable corner of the already fragile media industry. Estimated traffic across top crypto media publications has generally been on a downward trend this year, according to internet measurement company Similarweb.
- That started around March for Cointelegraph, CoinDesk, the Block, and Blockworks. DLNews was the exception.
- For June, preliminary month-over-month traffic on CoinDesk and the Block is down 25%, and 29% on Blockworks.
Flashback: Similarweb also helped Axios run some of these numbers back in 2022, and everyone is way down here from those days.
What they're saying: The Block's editor-in-chief, Tim Copeland, noticed the removal of the newsfeed in May, and on Tuesday said on X:
- "Digging into the numbers and looks like Coinbase removing its news feed has impacted top crypto news sites much more than I originally thought."
- "It's genuinely so over," he wrote, citing a common industry catchphrase. (He told Axios on Wednesday he intended the line as a joke.)
- In May, Copeland projected traffic would drop 15% to 25%, including for the Block; a month later, he's saying overall volumes were down 30% — possibly due to the Coinbase move and a "stagnating market."
Coinbase users have taken notice and posted a thread about it on Reddit, speculating as to why the exchange might've done away with news.
State of play: 😮💨 The world's largest crypto exchange, Binance, and data provider CoinMarketCap still have a news feature.
- CoinGecko, another data provider, does too.
The intrigue: Traditionally, crypto news traffic has always seemed to follow price (see 2017 and 2021).
- But it seems like those days are over. We had an all-time high for bitcoin earlier this year and it barely got the news sites to 2020 numbers.
Brady Dale contributed additional reporting.
Editor's note: The story has been updated to clarify remarks by Block editor-in-chief Tim Copeland.
