Helene Braun
Helene Braun is a markets reporter at CoinDesk who covers the intersection of Wall Street, bitcoin and digital assets, with a focus on how institutional investors and macro forces move crypto markets. Her work distinguishes itself by treating crypto as part of the broader financial system, connecting price action to liquidity, derivatives, exchange-traded products and big-ticket balance sheet decisions. She writes and hosts across print and audio, combining straight news with clear, market-focused analysis.
Bitcoin’s bear markets are getting milder
Braun regularly examines bitcoin’s market cycles, looking at how new market structures and investor profiles have changed the severity of downturns and the shape of recoveries. In a recent piece on bitcoin’s latest bear phase, she shows that the drawdown was milder than prior crashes and links that shift to spot ETFs, greater institutional participation and a more mature market. Her coverage compares bitcoin’s performance with equities, highlighting the role of AI-driven stock rallies and leverage in widening or narrowing the gap between crypto and traditional markets. She writes about periods when bitcoin underperforms equities despite seemingly bullish catalysts, explaining how positioning, liquidity and derivatives flows can blunt headline narratives.
Across these stories, she treats bitcoin as a risk asset influenced by central bank policy, macro data and investor rotation rather than an isolated technology story.
Wall Street and crypto’s institutional plumbing
A defining strand of Braun’s beat is the way major financial institutions wire crypto into their existing infrastructure. She covers cases where large banks route substantial Treasury funds into crypto-facing firms without fully tokenizing those products, focusing on how traditional instruments plug into new custody and trading pipelines. Her reporting on MoonPay’s trust charter in New York details how regulatory approvals expand institutional crypto services and reshape the competitive landscape for providers of fiat ramps and custody.
She follows CME’s record crypto futures volumes and open interest, connecting derivatives liquidity to both institutional demand and retail participation.
Stories on companies selling large bitcoin positions to fund strategic and capital-allocation decisions sit in the same lane, framing crypto holdings as part of treasury management and investor relations rather than speculative side bets. Her coverage of these moves emphasizes valuation, analyst reactions and how crypto exposure changes a company’s risk profile.
ETFs, alternative assets and relative value
Braun spends significant time on spot bitcoin ETFs and adjacent investment products, tracking how new vehicles change flows, market depth and investor behavior. Her work on gold’s outperformance versus bitcoin in 2025 sets crypto within a wider reserve and trade context, showing why central banks and asset allocators continue to favor gold despite ETF-driven excitement in digital assets.
She follows the expansion of crypto ETFs beyond bitcoin, including filings to convert trust products into spot Zcash ETFs and asset managers joining the race to list XRP funds, tying those launches to demand for privacy coins and cross-border payment exposure. Coverage of tokenized share classes on Ethereum for cash funds illustrates how fund managers use blockchain rails for round-the-clock trading and operational efficiency while keeping familiar structures for investors.
She also reports on how large technology investments, such as major cloud and AI infrastructure commitments, lift crypto-related stocks and miners, linking sector performance to thematic flows rather than isolated crypto news.
Markets Daily and real-time commentary
Beyond written stories, Braun is a regular host on CoinDesk’s Markets Daily podcast, where she delivers short, timely updates on price moves, macro events and news catalysts. In episodes covering bitcoin sell-offs, she interviews market participants on whether sharp drops clear the way for further gains, using those conversations to test narratives against trading data and positioning. She leads discussions on topics like bull market duration, major network upgrades and ETF developments, keeping the focus on how specific events feed into price and volatility. Her podcast work mirrors her written beat: the lens is always market structure, flows and investor behavior, whether the subject is Ethereum’s Dencun upgrade, leverage in the system or the next leg of a crypto bull cycle. She also contributes to week-in-review formats that synthesize the most important moves in crypto markets, offering a concise readout of what mattered to traders and why.
Across her work, Braun’s distinguishing trait is consistency: crypto is always treated as a set of markets, with prices, products, institutions and rules, not just a technology or culture story. She returns to themes of institutional adoption, derivatives, ETFs and macro drivers, making her coverage most relevant for stories that sit at the junction of digital assets, market structure and high-level finance.
4 more finance journalists.
Abigail Summerville
Abigail Summerville brings a leveraged finance background to her work covering consumer and retail mergers and acquisitions for Reuters. She reports on deal-making and capital markets across food, beverages, spirits, personal care, skincare, bath products and pet food. Her stories focus on transaction terms, ownership stakes, valuation, debt structures and funding sources. She often breaks news on potential sales and strategic reviews before formal announcements. Notable coverage includes Sazerac’s acquisition of Au Vodka, Blackstone’s exploration of a ZO Skin Health sale, CVC’s efforts to sell the parent of Dr Teal’s, and Colgate-Palmolive’s planned divestitures. She also covers consumer IPOs, including Jersey Mike’s and Black Rock Coffee, and co-writes Wall Street market reports. She joined Reuters in 2022 after three years covering leveraged finance and primary debt markets.
Adekunle Agbetiloye
Adekunle Agbetiloye is a senior reporter who connects capital flows, hard numbers and energy transition to the wider African economy. He works at Business Insider Africa, covering how money, technology and energy reshape economic growth, jobs and living conditions. His beat spans the African economy, technology, energy transition, climate change, startups and critical minerals, with a focus on concrete deals and data-led stories. He reports on African startup funding cycles, sovereign wealth funds, billionaire investors, multilateral and private investment programs, energy and power markets, Bitcoin mining, and economic policy choices. His work follows how governments finance spending, manage debt and respond to social pressure, and how sector snapshots and health and development metrics reveal links between macro indicators, corporate strategy and everyday costs.
Aimee Picchi
Aimee Picchi connects Social Security, retirement programs and economic policy directly to the financial security of ordinary Americans, showing how macro decisions hit household budgets. She is associate managing editor for CBS MoneyWatch at CBS News, covering business and personal finance with clear, accessible explanations of complex money issues. Her core beat is Social Security and retirement, interest rates and inflation, and how policy, markets and company strategies affect workers, retirees, savers and investors. She reports on benefit adequacy, looming Social Security cuts, COLA changes, Federal Reserve rate decisions, fuel costs, trade tensions and labor’s share of income, always framing coverage around pocketbook impacts. Her background includes retirement reporting fellowships, prior staff reporting on technology, media and business, an Institutional Investor book on affluent investors, and freelance work for national outlets. She also writes science fiction and fantasy and is a Nebula Award finalist.
Alex Harring
Alex Harring turns fast-moving market, economic and corporate developments into clear pre-market briefings that show what will matter when U.S. trading opens. He is a markets and economics reporter for CNBC’s digital platforms and writes Morning Squawk, a flagship daily newsletter that gives readers five key things to know before the stock market opens. His beat spans financial markets, investing, consumer trends and the U.S. economy, with coverage of central bank decisions, inflation, corporate strategy, sector moves and geopolitical shocks. He focuses on how policy, data and earnings shape equities, interest rates, currencies and investor positioning, linking price action with underlying drivers in real time and in reported features. Harring’s background reporting on corporate news, business and the economy across print, digital, broadcast and streaming informs his habit of connecting markets, companies and geopolitics in one frame.