Despite mainstream media coverage of crypto becoming more negative in recent years, a report found that by 2025, legacy media coverage of bitcoin became more balanced, with neutral reporting outweighing negative stories.
According to an aggregate of sentiment data compiled by crypto-intelligence platform Perception, the shift was less about excitement about bitcoin and more about the exhaustion of previous criticism.
Perception’s analysis, which tracked about 350,000 mentions across 407 outlets, suggests that environmental concerns, which once dominated mainstream coverage, disappeared by 2025, replaced by episodic reports of crime, kidnappings and illegal use.
While these stories are negative in isolation, they no longer framed bitcoin itself as structurally harmful, resulting in a net tone that was more neutral than adversarial.
For the first time, BTC’s biggest media moments weren’t framed around whether or not bitcoin is dead, the data shows. They were about how permanent bitcoin has become and whether its infrastructure can scale and adapt to that permanence.
However, this change in narrative did not happen overnight; rather, it unfolded in different phases throughout the year, according to Perception’s data.
January marked a change in the law as SEC Chairman Gary Gensler’s departure capped years of enforcement-led uncertainty. This led to many enforcement cases being dismissed by the agency, such as those against Binance and Coinbase.
In March, political legitimation followed with the issuance of an executive order establishing a strategic bitcoin reserve. While the industry is still awaiting an official outcome of the order, this has shifted media coverage from speculative debate to budget implications at the state level.
Then came October, which provided price validation as bitcoin set a new high before correcting, reinforcing its status as a mature, volatile asset rather than a fragile experiment.
By the end of the year, attention had shifted to technical questions surrounding long-term cryptographic foundations, especially after advances in quantum computing rekindled discussions about future-proofing the Bitcoin blockchain.
So where is the media attention headed after the coverage drops to a more neutral, normalized stance in 2025?
Not surprisingly, its artificial intelligence (AI) emerged as the dominant attention driver across mainstream and digital channels, according to Perception’s data.
AI, as a topic, generated significantly higher volume of discussion and sharper sentiment swings, with controversy exceeding bitcoin, although mining-related coverage, which previously received mostly negative coverage, skewed more positive, Perception said.
It seems that in the eyes of the mainstream media, bitcoin looks less like today’s disruptive threat and more like yesterday’s, as AI inherits the volatility of attention that once defined crypto coverage.
With crypto prices largely in range, only time will tell what catalyst will move coverage back into crypto. But for now, it looks like AI will dominate the media narrative in 2026, be it positive or negative.
Market movement
BTC: Bitcoin holds above $92,000 as ETF inflows resume and liquidations remain contained, pointing to institutional support below the market rather than a momentum-driven breakout.
ETH: Ethereum is rallying near $3,160, with modest gains and contained liquidations pointing to a steady accumulation rather than a speculative push.
Gold: Gold is trading at $4,392.93, maintaining its broader uptrend as Venezuela-driven geopolitical risk and upcoming US jobs data keep safe haven and Fed rate cut expectations in focus despite recent margin-triggered selling.
Nikkei 225: Japan’s Nikkei 225 jumped 2.26% in its first trading session of 2026, leading gains across Asia-Pacific markets after the United States said it had arrested Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, while oil prices fell on geopolitical uncertainty.
Elsewhere in Crypto
- Bitfinex Hacker Ilya Lichtenstein Credits Trump’s First Step Act for Early Prison Release (CoinDesk)
- SEC’s Only Democratic Commissioner Caroline Crenshaw Leaves Agency, Leaves Republican Panel (The Block)
- All Trump’s Pardons of Prominent Crypto Figures – So Far (Decrypt)
