Cryptobase is edited by Faeren Hopkins. If you want to pitch a piece, send a tip, flag a mistake or talk about advertising, this page explains how, and what happens next.
Writing for us
We do take contributed pieces, but not many, and not as a favour. The test is the same one we apply to our own work: does this tell a reader something they could not get from the outlets already covering it?
What works: you know a corner of this industry properly. Tax, custody, economics, regulation, building the things everyone else writes about. Explain something readers keep getting wrong, and explain it in plain English.
What does not: anything that reads as marketing for a product you are connected to, a rewritten press release, a you hold and would like other people to buy, or a piece written mainly to carry a link somewhere.
If you pitch, send the idea in a paragraph rather than a finished draft. Say who you are and why this subject is yours. We answer everything, including no.
The rules, stated plainly
Everything gets edited. To our house style, and for accuracy. You will see it before it runs.
Your name goes on it. We do not publish anonymous contributions, and we will say in the piece if you have a stake in what you are writing about.
Links in contributed pieces are nofollow. Every one, without exception. This is not personal — passing search authority to a third party is precisely the thing search engines penalise a publisher for, and we are not risking the site for anybody’s backlink.
Editorial coverage is not for sale. Space is. Nobody can pay their way into our news pages. You can pay to publish your own piece, and we are open to that, but it runs clearly marked as paid and it never dresses itself up as our journalism. Terms below.
Paying to publish
Yes, we do this, on a case by case basis. Get in touch and tell us what you have in mind.
The terms are not negotiable, because they are what makes the rest of the site worth advertising on.
It is labelled, at the top, where nobody can miss it. A paid piece carries a Paid post marker before the first line, not a grey line at the bottom. If a reader cannot tell within a second that somebody paid for it, we have done the reader over and devalued everything around it.
Every link is tagged as sponsored. Search engines require paid links to be marked, and a publisher who quietly sells search authority gets the whole site penalised, not just the offending page. This is not a point we will bend on for any amount of money.
We still edit it, and we can still say no. Paying gets your piece considered, not waved through. We will not publish something we think would leave a reader worse off, and we hold paid pieces to the same rules as our own writing: no price predictions, no guaranteed returns, nothing presented as investment advice.
Some things we cannot run at any price. Promoting a cryptoasset to UK consumers is regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority, and a paid piece that promotes a coin, a token or a trading service almost certainly falls inside those rules. If that is what you are after, say so up front and we will work out where we both stand before money changes hands. It is not a no. It is a not-until-we-have-checked.
News tips
If something is happening and you think it matters, tell us. Tips are welcome from anyone, and you can ask to stay anonymous.
Worth saying: we do no original reporting and we do not break stories. We will not be the first outlet to name a person, and we will not publish a claim that only one source is making. If your tip is solid, the useful thing we can do is explain it properly once it is on the record elsewhere.
Press releases
Send them by all means, but treat them as raw material rather than a submission. A press release is a company talking about itself, and we handle it as exactly that. If the underlying news passes our tests we will cover it, using the release as one source among several, and we will say whose announcement it was.
We do not publish releases as articles, reworded or otherwise.
Corrections
If we have got something wrong, tell us and we will fix it. Corrections are noted at the foot of the article with what changed and when. We do not quietly edit a piece and carry on as though the original never existed. Point us at the specific claim and, if you have it, the source that contradicts it.
Advertising and partnerships
We are open to both, case by case. Nothing is running on the site yet, which means the first advertisers get a clean page rather than a slot squeezed between four others.
Whatever we agree, it will be clearly marked and it will not buy influence over what we write. Our disclosure page sets out the rules we hold ourselves to, in public, so you can hold us to them too.
Tell us what you are trying to reach people about and we will tell you honestly whether we are the right place for it.
Quoting us
You are welcome to quote Cryptobase with a link back. If you want a comment for something you are writing, or want to check a detail in one of our pieces, ask.
How to reach us
editor@cryptobase.co.uk
One person reads that inbox, so give it a few days. Put what you want in the subject line — pitch, tip, correction, advertising — and it will get to the right place faster.