More than six in 10 crypto press releases published between June and November 2025 came from projects flagged as “high risk” or scams, according to a new industry report.
Crypto communications company Chainstory said that it analyzed a data set of 2,893 press releases, categorizing issuers by risk and scoring announcements based on tone and substance.
The report found that 62.5% of the releases were linked to high-risk activity or scams, with product or feature updates and trading or listing announcements accounting for 74%. High-risk releases included unrealistic yield promises and copy-pasted websites.
“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,” Tal Shmuel Harel, co-founder of Chainstory, told Cointelegraph.
Press releases are intended to communicate material developments to the public. When abused as a low-cost marketing tool, they can crowd out legitimate news and, in some cases, manipulate token prices.
High-risk projects dominate crypto press release volume
Projects that were flagged as high risk accounted for 35.6% of all releases in the data set, and scams made up another 26.9%. Low-risk projects published 27% of the releases analyzed.
Chainstory claimed that legitimate projects tend to rely less on mass press release distribution either because they attract organic media coverage or because they prefer targeted communications strategies. By comparison, higher-risk projects are more likely to flood the wires.
Press releases can be used as a shortcut around editorial judgment. When journalists decline to cover a project, companies can publish their own narrative by issuing syndicate releases on several websites.
Exchanges were among the heaviest users of mass distribution, with nearly a quarter of all releases analyzed tied to trading activity, token listings or promotional campaigns.
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The strategy also functions as a quantity-based visibility play that distributes the same announcement across multiple wires and syndication services, also known as shotgun distribution.
But Chainstory said that search engines tend to suppress duplicate content. When near-identical releases appear across the internet, most placements are filtered out of search results, leaving only one or two indexed versions visible for web surfers.
“If you shotgun-distribute one press release, which gets syndicated dozens of times to third-party websites, Google will most likely hide a big chunk of the duplicated content,” Harel said.
Market manipulation concerns trace back to TradFi
Promotion, user acquisition and raising brand awareness are standard business activities. Trying to attract attention does not cross an ethical line on its own.
But past enforcement cases have linked malicious press releases and promotional campaigns to market manipulation by insiders and paid advocates. Chainstory pointed to US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) enforcement patterns to argue that “cheap talk (press releases) can move prices.”
In a 2017 academic working paper, economist Thomas Renault analyzed SEC pump-and-dump cases from 2002 to 2015. The paper found that press releases were the most common channel for distributing misleading claims, appearing in 73.3% of the cases.
“The crypto equivalent is similar. We’ve seen tokens that barely have any real user base jump in price after a series of press releases announcing partnerships or future plans (which often never materialize beyond the press release),” Chainstory reported.
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At times, fake press releases have been able to slip past editorial barriers. In 2021, a false press release claimed that retail giant Walmart had started accepting Litecoin (LTC), causing a 30% spike in the cryptocurrency’s price. Walmart denied the claim, and the price quickly fell back down.
More recently, a platform masquerading as the USDC (USDC) stablecoin issuer Circle drew attention on Christmas Eve 2025 through a fake press release announcing a new platform. The dodgy project’s website has been taken down, but while it was live, it prompted visitors to connect their crypto wallets.
Press releases have also been used to build false legitimacy over time rather than through one-off scams.
For example, a July 2023 press release by defunct crypto exchange JPEX announced a partnership and presented itself as a licensed trading platform.
Two months later, Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission warned that the exchange was not licensed and had not applied for a license. JPEX soon became the center of what has been described as the largest crypto fraud case in the city.
Press releases between disclosure and abuse
Before crypto entered mainstream markets, press releases were already a common feature in market manipulation cases involving thinly traded assets.
Chainstory’s report found a similar pattern in crypto, where cheap distribution and weak gatekeeping make press releases an easy channel for risky projects to push their own narratives.
Promotion and disclosure are normal business practices. But when most press release activity comes from high-risk projects and scams, volume stops functioning as a credibility signal and instead reflects who is most willing to seek attention.
Press releases still matter as a way to communicate official information to the public. The problem is not the format, but how easily it can be exploited alongside limited scrutiny and frictionless distribution.
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