A comprehensive industry analysis has uncovered a troubling trend in cryptocurrency communications: the majority of press releases originate from dubious or fraudulent projects. According to a report by crypto communications company Chainstory, which analyzed 2,893 press releases published between June and November 2025, a staggering 62.5% were linked to high-risk activity or outright scams.
The breakdown of the data set is alarming: 35.6% of releases promoted high-risk projects, while 26.9% were definitively connected to scams. Only 27% of the analyzed releases came from low-risk projects. The report found that product or feature updates and trading or listing announcements dominated the content of these risky communications, accounting for 74% of the high-risk and scam-linked material.
Chainstory's methodology involved categorizing issuers by risk and scoring announcements based on tone and substance. The company's co-founder, Tal Shmuel Harel, explained the vetting process to Cointelegraph: "Incomplete data alone never pushed an issuer beyond medium risk. We escalated a project to high risk only when we identified multiple independent red flags." Common red flags included unrealistic yield promises and evidence of copy-pasted websites designed to create a false sense of legitimacy.
The report highlights a systemic issue where press releases, intended to communicate material developments, are being abused as a low-cost marketing tool. This practice can crowd out legitimate news and, in some cases, be used to manipulate token prices. Chainstory pointed to U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) enforcement patterns, arguing that "cheap talk (press releases) can move prices." This is supported by academic research; a 2017 working paper by economist Thomas Renault found that press releases were the most common channel for distributing misleading claims in SEC pump-and-dump cases, appearing in 73.3% of instances.
Real-world examples underscore the potential for harm. In 2021, a fake press release falsely claiming Walmart had begun accepting Litecoin (LTC) caused a 30% price spike before the claim was denied and the price collapsed. More recently, on Christmas Eve 2025, a platform masquerading as stablecoin issuer Circle circulated a fake press release announcing a new platform, prompting visitors to connect their crypto wallets. The report also cited the defunct exchange JPEX, which used a press release in July 2023 to announce a partnership and present itself as licensed, months before Hong Kong regulators warned it was unlicensed. JPEX later became the center of a major fraud case.
The analysis reveals that high-risk projects are more likely to engage in "shotgun distribution," flooding multiple wires and syndication services with the same announcement to create a quantity-based visibility play. However, Chainstory notes that search engines like Google tend to suppress such duplicate content, filtering out most placements and leaving only one or two indexed versions visible.
This saturation of risky communications creates significant challenges for media outlets, which must navigate a field where the majority of inbound announcements are potentially misleading, and for investors, whose trust in official-looking press releases can lead to substantial financial loss. The findings serve as a stark warning about the vulnerability of information channels within the cryptocurrency ecosystem.
