CoinCrafty is free to read. Two things pay for it: advertising, and affiliate links. You deserve to know when a link earns us money, so here is the whole arrangement in plain English.
What an affiliate link actually is
Some links we publish to shops, exchanges and services are affiliate links. If you click one and later buy something, the seller may pay us a small commission. The price you pay is the same either way; the commission comes out of the seller’s margin, not your pocket.
Where a link is commercial, we label it. You should never have to hover over a URL to work out whether we are being paid.
The firewall between money and editorial
Editorial decisions come first and commercial ones second, never the other way round. No advertiser or affiliate partner sees our work before it publishes, and none of them gets to approve, preview, veto or reword a single line.
We do not accept payment to cover a product, to soften a verdict, or to move something up a list. Companies do ask. The answer is no, and a company that pushes hard after being told no has told us something worth knowing about them.
Scores are set before commercial considerations
Our gear reviews are research-based. We work from documentation, security disclosures, firmware history, open-source repositories and the public record, and we score against the fixed rubric published in our review methodology. We have not bought or physically handled the devices we write about, and every review says so plainly.
The score falls out of that rubric. It is never adjusted afterwards because a partner programme exists. A product with no affiliate programme at all can, and does, finish above one that pays generously.
No affiliate links on safety content
This rule is absolute. Pages whose job is to keep you safe carry no affiliate links at all. That covers spotting scams, seed-phrase handling, key management and anything about recovering from a loss.
The reasoning is simple. If you are frightened and looking for help, the last thing you need is a page with a financial reason to send you somewhere specific. Those pages earn nothing, and we intend to keep them that way.
Things we will not do
- Publish sponsored content dressed up as editorial.
- Let a commission rate decide which product tops a comparison.
- Link to a wallet, exchange or “recovery service” we would not point a friend towards.
- Hide a commercial relationship behind a shortened or unlabelled link.
If you would rather not use them
Nothing here depends on our links. Search for the product, buy direct, and the guide works exactly the same. If you want to support the site another way, reading, sharing and signing up to the newsletter all genuinely help.
If you spot a link that looks unlabelled, or a review that reads like it was bought, tell us through contact. Our wider standards live in the editorial guidelines.