Five crypto PR case studies: what was published, and where. Each entry below states the client, the outlets that ran the piece, and what the placement was for. These were previously five separate pages of a few sentences each; they are collected here as crypto PR case studies so the pattern across them is visible rather than scattered.
MaskEx: search visibility through a release
MaskEx is a custody and trading platform, and the objective was to appear in search results for the brand rather than to build links. The release ran on Yahoo Finance, CoinCodex and CryptoPotato. Search visibility for a brand name is one of the few PR goals that a wire distribution serves directly, because breadth is the point and link status is not.
Gallanttoken: two releases against a campaign date
Two press releases published to a fixed schedule, on Yahoo Finance and MarketWatch, with copywriting for both. The process was the one we use on every release: request the details, draft, send for approval, correct, and publish only once the client confirms. No release goes out without that confirmation, which is slower and prevents the single most expensive PR failure.
Buakaw.club: an NFT drop by a public figure
Buakaw Banchamek, the Thai fighter, launched a first NFT collection, and the campaign needed pre-sale attention and search presence. The release ran on The Coinrise, CoinGape, CryptoPotato, ZyCrypto and CryptoNewsZ. A recognisable name shortens the editorial conversation considerably; a collection without one does not get the same reception from the same outlets.
ZXError Art: a generative collection with a narrow audience
ZXError Art reinterprets error and test screens from the ZX Spectrum as generative pieces, aimed at artists rather than traders. Press release and copywriting in CryptoPotato, supported by social content. The narrow audience is the point of the case: a niche collection does not need wide distribution, it needs the two or three outlets its audience actually reads.
Paycer: a DeFi protocol across tier-one and long tail
The largest of the five. Publications included Forbes and Cointelegraph, then Benzinga, Yahoo Finance, MarketWatch, Yahoo News and more than 200 smaller news sites. Placements reached the first pages of Google Search and Google News, and the founders reported that specific publications generated visible community reaction. The campaign also ran an airdrop and an influencer component alongside the PR.
Cryptocean: a news hook instead of a press release
An exchange that had bought paid articles and got neither traffic nor pickup. The problem was not distribution. It was that nothing in the material gave an editor a reason to run it. We ran a session that produced 30 candidate news hooks, filtered them past journalists we work with, and kept five. The client chose the one that was odd enough to be repeated and carried no reputational risk: mining cryptocurrency on gym exercise machines.
The story was seeded first through Telegram channels and a list of individual journalists, which built enough early reference mass for larger outlets to pick it up on their own. It reached more than four national outlets, including Lenta.ru, News.ru, RIA and 360tv, without a paid placement in any of them. After the wave, journalists started approaching the brand for comment, which is the part a press release cannot buy.
The lesson generalises past this client: earned tier-one coverage is bought with the idea, not with the budget. A release distributes what you already have. A hook creates the reason to run it.
What these crypto PR case studies have in common
Every one of them was bought for visibility rather than link equity, which matches the underlying constraint: only 30 of 195 outlets that accept a paid release carry a followed link. Our study of 195 crypto PR outlets sets out which ones and why the proportion is so low.
The second pattern is approval discipline. In all five, the draft went to the client before publication and stayed unpublished until confirmed. A release that goes out with a wrong figure cannot be recalled from 200 syndication partners.
For the outlet inventory with readership and link status, see where releases land. For how PR sits alongside other channels, see crypto PR.
Planning a release? Send the brief on Telegram at https://t.me/flexe_io_agency and we will come back with an outlet shortlist within 24 hours.
Other case studies
Campaigns grouped by discipline: paid advertising, community, forum and airdrop, content production, influencer.