Cointelegraph Reportedly Seeks Buyer After Traffic Collapses 80%
Cointelegraph is reportedly seeking a buyer after a Google penalty cut organic traffic about 80%, with monthly visits falling from 12 million to roughly 700,000.
Cointelegraph, one of the oldest crypto news outlets, is looking for a buyer after losing roughly 80% of its organic traffic, a person familiar with the matter said, speaking anonymously because the matter is private.
The site’s monthly visits fell from more than 12 million in December 2024 to just above 700,000 as of September 1, 2026, according to Similarweb data. The collapse followed a Google manual penalty in October 2025 that removed the site from search results entirely, and the traffic level has not recovered since.
The asking price and the structure of any sale were not disclosed, and no bidders have been named. Cointelegraph did not respond to requests for comment.
The company was founded in 2013, has more than 200 employees and runs a distributed newsroom across more than 50 countries. It has used a franchise model for regional editions: its Middle East and North Africa franchise was sold to Luna Media Corporation in July 2022 to fund global and regional expansion, so any sale of the main brand would not include that operation.
The traffic collapse sits against a broader decline in crypto media. Traffic across 349 tracked outlets fell about 33% in 2025, from roughly 105.9 million visits in January to 70.8 million in December, per an Outset Media Index analysis. Flat crypto prices also shifted user attention away from crypto news through the period, compounding the pressure on digital asset newsrooms.
The sale effort follows a difficult stretch for the company: in June 2025 attackers exploited the site’s front end to inject a fraudulent pop-up promoting a fake CTG token and ICO airdrop, a security incident separate from the search penalty.
