Ben Weiss

Ben Weiss follows the pressure points where crypto markets, complex trading products, and political power intersect. He reports on digital assets and prediction markets, and previously covered the industry for Fortune and a specialist crypto newsroom. His work mixes scoops on new exchanges and regulatory shifts with close, data-heavy coverage of derivatives, options, and market structure.

Derivatives, perps, and the plumbing of crypto markets

Weiss spends much of his time on the derivatives end of crypto rather than on simple token price moves. At Fortune he has broken news on new trading venues, including an exclusive on a perpetual futures exchange backed by the son of a sitting U.S. senator and prominent venture firms.

In that kind of piece he sets out who is funding the platform, what products it will list, and how it fits into the broader fight over leverage and risk in crypto.

He also writes in-depth features on the infrastructure behind high-volume derivatives platforms. His profile of the Hyperliquid team, for example, examines how a small, pseudonymous group built one of the most active venues for perpetual futures with no venture funding and a focus on speed and professional traders.

The story looks at revenue, user behavior, and the trade-offs of running a lean, offshore-style business while competing with larger exchanges.

Alongside features and exclusives, Weiss produces regular market stories that explain what derivatives flows say about sentiment.

His coverage of bitcoin options has highlighted shifts in put–call ratios on major venues, the size of liquidations during sell-offs, and the way traders hedge around geopolitical tensions or central bank meetings. These pieces tend to lead with a clear data point and then walk through which traders are positioned where, what that implies for near-term price action, and how it compares with past stress episodes in crypto.

Prediction markets and the CFTC

Prediction markets are a second core strand of his beat. At his previous specialist outlet he reported on the CFTC’s campaign against platforms like Polymarket, giving space to economists who argue for the informational value of such markets and to regulators who see them as offside gambling.

He uses those interviews and academic work to spell out what is actually being banned, how much money is at stake, and what that means for forecasting markets more broadly.

Weiss carries that focus into his coverage of derivatives and policy at Fortune and beyond. He has followed the agency’s decisions around whether exchanges and prediction platforms can list perpetual futures on macro and event-based outcomes, as well as legal pushback from incumbent players. His reporting on conflicts between large derivatives exchanges, prediction venues, and the CFTC is detailed on complaint filings, product design, and jurisdiction, rather than just the headline of a lawsuit or approval.

That work sets him up for his current remit covering cryptocurrencies and prediction markets together. Across outlets he treats prediction markets not as a curiosity but as another segment of the derivatives landscape, with its own regulatory experiments and strategic importance for crypto-native firms.

Trump, tech giants, and the politics of digital assets

Weiss consistently follows how crypto is used and governed by powerful political and corporate actors. His resume highlights a scoop on the Department of Justice under a Trump administration dismantling a crypto-focused enforcement unit, a story that combines institutional sourcing with close reading of bureaucratic moves.

He has also reported extensively on the business side of the Trump family’s crypto ventures, including how assets are structured, who the key lieutenants are, and what exposure retail investors might carry.

He applies the same lens to large technology companies. A co-bylined investigation into a major social media company’s stablecoin plans mapped out internal interest in digital dollars and the regulatory questions that raised in Washington.

Weiss has also covered congressional and agency scrutiny of those efforts, using hearings, letters, and private briefings to show how quickly policy can close in on ambitious crypto projects backed by big tech.

His political coverage extends into the legislature and the regulatory state more broadly. He tracks legislators with strong crypto positions, crypto-focused children or staff, and their links to startups and venture funds.

On the enforcement side, he uses court filings and trial reporting, including time in the courtroom for the Sam Bankman-Fried case, to detail how prosecutors, defense lawyers, and judges are setting precedent for future crypto prosecutions.

Data-led reporting and long-form features

Beneath the topics, Weiss’s work is marked by a data and documents habit. He describes building scripts to scrape regulatory filings and public search results as part of a major crypto ranking project at Fortune, and that approach shows up in his stories through precise references to filings, flows, and ownership structures.

Market pieces tend to anchor themselves in hard numbers - open interest, liquidations, volume, on-chain activity - rather than vague sentiment.

At the same time, he writes long-form features that give space to the people behind protocols and platforms. Stories on the intersection of cryptography and artificial intelligence, or on large tech companies’ role in the rise of uncensored AI systems, place crypto in a wider technology and governance context. Profiles of exchange founders and protocol teams linger on how products are built, how governance is structured, and what kinds of traders they are courting, not just on personality.

Outside of crypto-specific outlets, Weiss has contributed to a broad set of magazines and digital publications across technology, science, and business.

He has also worked as a fact-checker, which informs a cautious handling of claims and sourcing in his reported pieces. Across beats and employers, the through-line is a focus on how complex financial and technical systems are constructed, who benefits, and what happens when those systems collide with regulators and elected officials.