How CoinMinutes Started the Journey in the Crypto Landscape

[davidsmith]

The crypto landscape of late 2022 was basically an information wasteland. As whales started dumping, MEV bots front-ran transactions, and liquidity pools drained, a clear pattern emerged: reliable intel reached regular investors only after their assets were already toast.

The destruction followed a predictable script. A rumor would surface on Twitter. Prices would wobble. Hours later, mainstream Cryptocurrency outlets would publish their first takes. By then, informed insiders had already moved their assets while everyday investors were left holding the bag.

We built our first version in just 17 days - though I'll be the first to admit it was absolutely terrible. The site crashed constantly, we missed major developments, and our early analysis sometimes contained embarrassing technical errors. But we were publishing faster than anyone else, and that made all the difference to our initial readers.

Beyond News: Teaching People How This Stuff Actually Works​

Collaborative crypto learning

At Coinminutes , we saw that breaking news pulls traffic, but about six months in, we noticed something interesting: our most engaged users weren't just reading market updates. They were devouring basic explanatory content.

"I've watched like 15 YouTube videos on setting up a wallet and I'm still afraid I'll lose everything if I click the wrong button," a reader told me at a meetup. This wasn't an isolated case - we kept hearing variations of the same story.

Our education approach evolved through a lot of trial and error:

• We started with analogies that make sense to non-technical people (the blockchain as a shared spreadsheet everyone can see but nobody can tamper with)
• Added step-by-step guides that don't skip the scary parts (yes, if you lose your seed phrase, your money is gone forever)
• Built a dedicated section on avoiding the mistakes that have wrecked countless portfolios

This stuff isn't sexy, but during the next bull run when new users flooded in, these resources became our most shared content.

When Readers Became Our Best Analysts​

The community aspect caught us completely by surprise. We'd set up standard social channels as an afterthought, but they evolved into something much more valuable.

During the Lido stETH de-peg concerns last year, a reader who'd been monitoring validator behaviors noticed unusual patterns 3 hours before any major coverage appeared. Another reader, a smart contract auditor, flagged unusual function calls in a popular DeFi protocol before even the developer team acknowledged the issue.

We began formalizing this into a verification workflow:

1. Community flags unusual activity (often through Discord)
2. Our technical team checks the underlying data
3. Editors add market context and publish findings

When readers get credited for these catches, they become even more engaged. One of our best analysts today started as a community member who repeatedly spotted MEV opportunities before they became widely known.

Further Reading: Learning Cryptocurrency Made Simple with CoinMinutes

Where We Stand and What's Next​

We've come a long way from our emergency response origins, though we're still scrappy compared to bigger outlets. Our focus now spans on-chain analysis, protocol assessments, and regulatory breakdowns - all areas where timing creates real trading edges.

The site today includes news in both English and Vietnamese, market analysis, and educational resources. We publish across various channels, though our YouTube efforts have been honestly underwhelming compared to our written content.

CoinMinutes' path to crypto growth

Looking ahead, we're working on:

• Building better L2 coverage as fragmentation accelerates
• Expanding regulatory insights (an area I think most crypto media covers terribly)
• Creating visualization tools for complex on-chain activity
• Finding better ways to teach newbies without boring experienced traders

What We've Learned Along the Way​

The biggest lesson? In crypto , timing changes everything. Information that arrives after you could have acted isn't just less valuable - it's worthless.Technical validation matters enormously. The ability to verify claims against on-chain data separates actual journalism from glorified PR. And transparency - even when it hurts - builds something money can't buy: genuine trust in a space where that's in critically short supply. "The problem we identified in 2022 hasn't changed," I remind our team regularly. "Crypto still moves by the minute, and quality information still arrives too late for most people. Our job is to fix that gap." For anyone navigating these markets, I believe the right information at the right time isn't just helpful - it's the whole ballgame. And despite all our early stumbles, that's the problem we wake up excited to solve every day.

Useful Link: Coinminutes’ Roundup of the Cryptocurrency Market (@coinminutescrypto)