Crypto PR teams still walk into Asia with the same instinct they use in the US and Europe: pick a handful of “top tier” outlets, land a splashy feature, and let the rest of the market copy the narrative. The problem is simple—Asia doesn’t work like that.
According to three recent reports from Outset PR, Asia has no single “New York Times of crypto.” Influence doesn’t consolidate around one dominant publication, and attention doesn’t behave like a regional pool. Instead, it breaks into separate ecosystems built around language, regulation, platform incentives, and trust-based reading habits. In other words, Asia isn’t one media plan. It’s several completely different ones running side by side.
That fragmentation matters more in 2025 than it did in previous cycles, because the audience is tightening. When speculative hype fades, readers don’t evenly disappear—they concentrate. From August to October, crypto-native media traffic across Asia dropped 14.5%, while attention consolidated around a small circle of trusted outlets. The middle tier got squeezed hardest.
This is what those reports really mean for founders, exchanges, protocols, and PR teams trying to win mindshare in Asia without wasting months and budgets on the wrong targets.
Why is there no “New York Times of crypto” in Asia?
In the West, crypto media influence tends to cluster around a relatively stable set of publishers. You can debate quality, bias, and reach—but there’s still a recognizable “center.” In Asia, Outset’s core argument is that there is no single center at all.
That’s not just because of language differences. It’s structural. Outset breaks the region into distinct operating models—markets where influence is tightly linked to venture ecosystems, markets where exchanges anchor the information flow, and markets where independent media exists but under heavy regulatory pressure.
The practical outcome is brutal for cookie-cutter PR: a strategy that “works in Asia” doesn’t exist. A strategy that works in Korea might fail in Japan. A strategy built for Hong Kong won’t translate cleanly to Vietnam or Indonesia. Even if you get coverage, it might not travel.
Investor Takeaway
Is Asia’s crypto media audience shrinking—or just consolidating?
From August to October, Outset measured Similarweb traffic across 120 crypto-native outlets in East and Southeast Asia and found a 14.5% decline in total visits. That number sounds like a slowdown, but the more important signal is what didn’t change: the hierarchy.
Even during the downturn, the top 20 outlets still controlled roughly 81% of the region’s total traffic. In other words, the big players kept their share while the rest lost oxygen.
This is what consolidation looks like in media: the market cools, casual readers exit, and audiences retreat into trusted habits. If you’re not already part of the trusted loop, you don’t just lose growth—you lose visibility entirely.
For PR teams, this shifts the game from “how do we get coverage?” to “how do we build repeat exposure inside the small group readers still care about?”
Investor Takeaway
Why does South Korea dominate Asia’s crypto media attention?
Outset’s Korea report zooms in on what it calls Asia’s most influential and behaviorally unique crypto market. Korea doesn’t just “perform well.” It overwhelms the regional picture.
Multiple summaries of the underlying dataset point to Korea representing close to 60% of crypto-native media traffic in the region during Q2 2025—by a massive margin.
That matters because Korea isn’t just big—it’s reflexive. It reacts quickly, trades aggressively, and treats crypto as a cultural mainstream topic in a way many other markets don’t. For teams chasing Asia-wide relevance, Korea remains the fastest lever to pull.
But Outset’s insight isn’t just “Korea is large.” It’s that Korea behaves differently enough that you can’t treat it like a scaled-up version of another market. It has its own media gravitational field.
Investor Takeaway
If Korea reads crypto news so heavily, why didn’t KAIA keep users on-chain?
This is where the Korea report gets uncomfortable—in a useful way.
Outset highlights a gap between attention and adoption by comparing crypto media traffic, CEX activity, and KAIA’s on-chain usage in Q2 2025. The headline conclusion: KAIA’s on-chain activity plunged roughly 90% during the same period Korea remained Asia’s biggest crypto media audience.
That disconnect is the real story. Korea is a reminder that visibility is not the same as retention. You can win the narrative and still lose the users.
When PR teams treat coverage like a conversion funnel, they overestimate what media attention does on its own. In practice, attention is a spark—not fuel. It needs product incentives, reliable onboarding, exchange accessibility, and reasons to stay. Without that, the market will consume your story and move on.
Investor Takeaway
Are algorithms losing control of crypto distribution in Asia?
Outset’s Asia-wide traffic report suggests something subtle but important: during the slowdown, brand recognition and habitual reading mattered more than search or social discovery. That means readers didn’t “browse” crypto news as much—they returned to familiar sources.
At the same time, AI-driven referrals rose to 11.49% in the August–October window, which is large enough to matter.
The takeaway isn’t “SEO is dead” or “AI will replace distribution.” The takeaway is that distribution has split:
- Direct traffic is trust and habit. You earn it slowly and keep it through consistency.
- AI discovery is structure and clarity. You earn it by writing in a way machines can confidently summarize.
PR teams now have two audiences: humans who only trust a few outlets, and AI systems that increasingly shape first impressions. Ignoring either one is a mistake.
Investor Takeaway
What should crypto PR teams do differently in Asia right now?
Here’s the simple version: stop treating Asia as “distribution,” and start treating it as “market design.”
Outset’s reports collectively point to the same reality: influence is local, and readers are consolidating around small circles of trusted publishers. That forces a more disciplined strategy—one built on repeat narratives, not one-off placements.
In practical terms, that means:
- Build market-specific narratives. Don’t copy-paste a global pitch into five countries and expect alignment.
- Prioritize repeat presence over “big hits.” Consolidation makes frequency more valuable than novelty.
- Measure conversions separately. Korea proves attention can be huge while on-chain activity collapses.
- Write like AI is watching. Because it is—and referrals are already meaningful.
Most importantly: treat “credibility” as your first KPI. In a fragmented region with no unified media authority, credibility is what travels across borders when headlines don’t.
Investor Takeaway
The bottom line: Asia’s crypto media is getting tighter, not simpler
Crypto teams like simple maps. Asia is not a simple map.
Outset’s core message across all three reports is that you’re dealing with a fragmented region where trust behaves locally, attention consolidates quickly when markets cool, and “visibility” does not guarantee adoption.
If you’re building in Asia—or selling into it—the media strategy that works is the one that respects how the region actually reads, reacts, and converts. Not the one that looks good in a global PR deck.
Full reports:
