Molly White
Molly White provides critical, skeptical coverage of the cryptocurrency industry and the broader technology world through her independently published newsletter, Citation Needed. Her work focuses on how crypto and technology systems operate in practice, documenting disasters and wrongdoing and linking them to policy, power, and real-world impact. She approaches the crypto beat as a researcher and software engineer who treats the sector as a subject for investigation rather than promotion.
Critical coverage of the cryptocurrency industry
White’s primary focus is the cryptocurrency and web3 industries, which she approaches as a critic rather than a booster.
Citation Needed explicitly describes itself as offering “critical coverage of the cryptocurrency industry,” and her reporting consistently interrogates the claims made by industry promoters. She is best known for her Web3 is Going Just Great project, which documents disasters in the cryptocurrency and web3 space, and that lens of cataloguing failures, scams, and structural problems informs the newsletter.
The newsletter provides reporting and analysis on crypto developments, with explainers that unpack how new projects, market events, and enforcement actions fit into longer-running patterns of misconduct and risk. Besides brief quotations or interviews, all writing in Citation Needed is by White, and the masthead positions her as a leading critic of cryptocurrencies and blockchain-based projects.
Technology and tech policy beyond crypto
Although crypto is the core beat, White extends her reporting into technology and tech policy more broadly. Citation Needed’s about page describes it as an independent newsletter on cryptocurrency, technology, and tech policy, with an emphasis on stories that mainstream coverage overlooks or fails to challenge. She writes about issues in the wider technology world, examining how platforms, infrastructure, and emerging technical systems affect people’s lives rather than treating them as abstract innovations.
Her Follow the Crypto election spending tracker reflects a sustained interest in the political influence of the crypto industry, connecting campaign finance, lobbying, and regulatory outcomes to the technology she covers. Issue titles such as “Issue 101 – Bought and paid for” and “Issue 103 – The President's Council of Podcasters” point to recurring attention to the overlap between technology, political power, and media.
Across these subjects, her work is framed as tech reporting without boosterism, prioritising scrutiny of incentives, conflicts of interest, and policy consequences.
Weekly explainers and recurring issue format
Citation Needed is structured around numbered issues that combine a main reported or analytical piece with coverage of recent events in the crypto and tech worlds. The newsletter offers weekly explainers of developments in the cryptocurrency industry, often tying together several contemporaneous incidents into a single narrative about risk, regulation, or industry behaviour. White’s headlines tend to be wry or allusive - such as “Issue 101 – Bought and paid for”, “Issue 103 – The President's Council of Podcasters”, and “Issue 106 – A tremendous birthday present” - while the body of each issue delivers detailed reporting and context. Her explainers draw on her technical background, translating complex mechanisms behind blockchain projects and financial instruments into plain language for readers without sacrificing precision.
Within this recurring format, she maintains a clear separation between reporting, analysis, and commentary, and returns frequently to themes of accountability, consumer harm, and regulatory response.
Cross-platform projects and audio editions
White’s work on Citation Needed is part of a wider ecosystem of projects that reinforce her focus on crypto and technology accountability. She runs Web3 is Going Just Great alongside the newsletter, using that site to continuously document notable failures and abuses in the web3 and cryptocurrency industries, which then inform deeper dives in her written issues.
She also maintains the Follow the Crypto election spending tracker, which concentrates on money flows from crypto interests into political campaigns and advocacy, complementing her tech policy coverage. Citation Needed is available as an audio feed, with recordings of newsletter issues released as podcast episodes under the Molly White’s Citation Needed banner.
Across her website, newsletter, and social presences, she consistently describes herself as a crypto and tech industry researcher and critic, underscoring that her work is designed to challenge hype and surface the structural realities of the sector.
4 more crypto journalists.
Alex Carchidi
Alex Carchidi treats crypto as a long-term investment class for retail investors, focusing on portfolio construction rather than short-term trading noise. He is a healthcare and cryptocurrency analyst at The Motley Fool whose crypto analysis is carried by Yahoo Finance, with a beat centered on Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, XRP, and AI-driven crypto projects. His coverage of Bitcoin emphasizes cyclical behavior, halving cycles, momentum, and sentiment, and what those mean for allocation, time horizons, and volatility. He explains how protocol design and new use cases in Ethereum, Solana, XRP, and AI-focused tokens can translate into durable investment theses. He writes in a straightforward, explanatory style, giving practical guidance on crypto exposure, dollar-cost averaging, risk management, and market structure. His broader work includes equities and thematic investing in biotech, pharma, cannabis, and digital asset companies, grounded in prior experience as a bench scientist and science writer in biopharma and biomedical research.
Allie Garfinkle
Allie Garfinkle covers the people, capital, and technology moving private markets, with crypto treated as part of dealmaking around AI and frontier startups. She is a senior writer and editor at Fortune and edits Term Sheet, its weekday newsletter on venture capital, private equity, and startup funding. Her reporting focuses on new funds, rounds, exits, software, infrastructure, AI, cybersecurity, climate tech, health tech, consumer brands, and private-market risk. She has covered Laravel, insurtech funding, OpenAI, Demis Hassabis and Isomorphic Labs, Nikesh Arora, and the role of AI in climate-tech deals. She also hosts the Term Sheet podcast, contributes to BBC’s Business Matters, co-chairs the Brainstorm conference series, and moderates industry events. Earlier, she covered Amazon, Google, and Meta and helped produce PBS Frontline business documentaries. She explains wider market shifts through individual companies, deals, data, and investor perspectives.
Anastasia Chernikova
Anastasia Chernikova covers crypto and digital assets as financial and business infrastructure, with equal focus on market structure and the people inside it. She writes for Forbes on crypto markets, digital asset infrastructure, fintech rails and the human impact of 24/7 trading. Her work sits at the intersection of crypto, artificial intelligence and mental health, linking technical trends to leadership and long‑term resilience. She reports on altcoins, DeFi losses, prediction markets, tokenized real estate, institutional adoption and distribution platforms that could accelerate mainstream use. A second strand tracks how AI and automation reshape crypto and financial workflows, from AI agents acting like employees to social trading feeds and stablecoin rails. She runs Vivid Minds, a newsletter publication on resilience and the psychological costs of high‑pressure careers, and draws on extensive founder and investor interviews to build narrative‑driven features.
Anushka Basu
Anushka Basu covers the points where digital assets, listed companies and policy decisions meet, with crypto markets stories driven by hard numbers rather than hype. She is a crypto markets reporter and staff writer at Stocktwits, and her work on Yahoo Finance centers on Ethereum treasuries, crypto-linked capital raises and how altcoins move against the larger market. She spends repeated time on Bitmine Immersion Technologies and other crypto-treasury names, tracking ETH holdings, staking levels, capital stacks and funding choices to show how companies finance digital asset accumulation. Her beat runs through crypto-linked equities and mining infrastructure, treating index moves, listings, contracts and preferred dividends as catalysts for equity and income investors. Alongside company coverage, she reports on altcoin performance, market cycles, token flows and regulatory risk, translating on-chain and market structure concepts into clear, accessible, technically detailed stories.