A rising crypto market creates more than gains on price charts: it also creates demand for attention. News about records, influencer predictions, Telegram discussions and invitations to “get in before it’s too late” form a stream where analysis sits alongside advertising and manipulation. Yet the relationship between prices and this stream is more complicated than “more posts mean a higher market.”
Researchers at the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) examined crypto exchange app usage across 95 countries from 2015 to 2022: rising Bitcoin prices were accompanied by an influx of users. A separate BIS model found that a 10% price increase led to roughly 3% growth in user numbers. This is a historical estimate, not a universal forecast.
The finding is consistent with FOMO — the fear of missing out. People see gains that have already happened and start looking for a way to participate. For crypto media, they represent a potential new audience; for exchanges, customers; for channel publishers, monetisation opportunities. This is an interpretation of economic incentives, not a measured correlation across all platforms.
Coinbase, for example, advertises partner compensation equal to 50% of referred users’ trading fees for their first three months; terms may differ for certain regulated activities in the EU/EEA.
Under this model, a publisher earns from the audience’s trading, regardless of its outcome. A referral link does not itself imply deception, but it creates a conflict of interest: encouraging trading may benefit the publisher more than the reader.
Telegram can serve as a coordination tool as well as a discussion platform. Researchers Jiahua Xu and Benjamin Livshits analysed 412 pump-and-dump events organised on Telegram between June 2018 and February 2019. [3]
The mechanism involves artificially boosting demand and selling an asset after its price jumps. Here, media activity participates in creating the price movement. However, research into specific schemes does not justify treating every active crypto channel as a manipulator.
## Scams respond to market cycles too
In its report covering 2022, Chainalysis observed that scam inflows followed Bitcoin’s price with a lag of roughly three weeks. The relationship was particularly strong for investment scams; romance scams and fake giveaways did not show the same positive association. This was an observation over a specific period, not a permanent rule.
The problem remains substantial: in a January 2026 publication, Chainalysis reported at least $14 billion in crypto scam inflows for 2025. A potential total exceeding $17 billion was a projection accounting for addresses not yet identified. These figures alone do not establish the influence of market growth or media activity.
These findings suggest a possible sequence: rising prices → more attention → more opportunities to earn from an audience. In specific pump schemes, attention can then generate demand in return.
However, the cited research provides no single correlation coefficient linking growth across the entire crypto market to activity across all media. News, independent analysis, affiliate advertising and fraudulent pitches serve different purposes. A busier feed is therefore better treated as a reason to check the source and its incentives than as a standalone buying signal.
Every channel in the catalogue is checked by the editors against one method: it is how we work out the rating, place a channel at a risk level and decide whether it belongs in Market Scam.