Six trade press domains supply most of the answer. SEC.gov is climbing fast.
-
01CoinDesk coindesk.com
Trade press of record for crypto markets and policy.
T3Trade Press -
02CoinTelegraph cointelegraph.com
Trade press authority for token and ecosystem news.
T3Trade Press -
03Investopedia investopedia.com
Definitional authority — what is X, how does Y work.
T3Publisher -
04Wikipedia wikipedia.org
Baseline for protocols, history, key figures.
T2Encyclopedic -
05CoinGecko coingecko.com
Token data, prices, market cap.
T3Publisher -
06CoinMarketCap coinmarketcap.com
Token data alongside CoinGecko.
T3Publisher -
07SEC.gov sec.gov
Enforcement actions, ETF filings, registrations — rising fast.
T1Government -
08Reddit reddit.com/r/cryptocurrency
Sentiment, project rumors, scam detection.
T4Platform -
09Binance Academy academy.binance.com
Exchange-owned content cited as neutral education.
T5Brand-Owned -
10Coinbase Learn coinbase.com/learn
Exchange-owned content cited as neutral education.
T5Brand-Owned
Token-specific prompts · "is X a scam" · price prediction. No source dominates. Trade press, Reddit, and brand blogs fight for the answer.
Enforcement and ETF eras running concurrently. The category's source map is reshaping in real time.
- Which sources do AI engines cite most for crypto?
- CoinDesk, CoinTelegraph, Investopedia, CoinGecko, CoinMarketCap, Wikipedia, and SEC.gov. Reddit and exchange-owned content round out the top sources.
- Why is SEC.gov rising in AI crypto citations?
- Enforcement filings and ETF approval documents have made SEC.gov the primary-source authority for institutional crypto questions. Citation share has roughly doubled since 2024.
- Do AI engines cite exchange-owned content as neutral?
- Yes. Binance Academy and Coinbase Learn surface in explainer prompts as if they were independent. The retrieval layer does not weight ownership.
- How are token-specific prompts resolved?
- Token-specific prompts have no dominant source. Engines mix trade press, data aggregators, Reddit, and project-owned content unevenly.
- How can crypto projects increase their AI citation share?
- Influence is indirect. Earn CoinDesk and CoinTelegraph coverage. Maintain Wikipedia accuracy. Surface in CoinGecko and CoinMarketCap data structures.
- Are CoinDesk and CoinTelegraph cited equally?
- Close, but not equal. CoinDesk leads on policy and institutional prompts; CoinTelegraph leads on retail and token news. Combined: ~22% of crypto citations.
Method
Citation share modeled across four AI engines — ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews — and a fixed prompt set of 60+ queries spanning informational, transactional, comparison, safety, "best of," and explanatory classes.
Sources tagged on the five-tier Retrieval Hierarchy: T1 Government & Academic · T2 Encyclopedic · T3 Publisher & Trade Press · T4 Community Platforms · T5 Brand-Owned. Estimates are directional and date-stamped.
