State of Crypto Marketing 2026 Report Published

Helsinki, Uusimaa Sep 24, 2026 (Issuewire.com) - Seven senior Coinbase marketers, including the CMO, left this year -- not for another exchange, but for OpenAI and Anthropic. That is one of the findings in State of Crypto Marketing 2026, published today by NorthPoint: twelve months of crypto marketing, built entirely from the public record. 27 companies, 17 agencies, every figure with its source. Free at northpoint.fi/state-of-crypto-marketing-2026.

What the report finds

The licence became the offer. Two of the 27 companies -- Binance and HTX -- lost the right to win new customers in Europe on 1 July 2026. Six licensed exchanges, four of them in the report, ran offers at the customers they left behind; Kraken's landing page said it outright: "Most exchanges aren't licensed after July 1. Kraken is." Google has made the register an advertising condition: without MiCA authorisation, no Search, YouTube or Display ads in the EU.

The senior marketers went to work for AI. Seven senior Coinbase marketers, including its Chief Marketing Officer, joined OpenAI and Anthropic. Part of the year's "AI layoffs" story belongs to the press rather than the companies: of 26 public workforce cuts in the window, nine were framed as an AI story and only five in the company's own words. None named marketing as the function cut.

The agencies claim the clients. Seven of the ten companies any agency names are claimed by two or more agencies at once -- KuCoin by three -- and not one company has confirmed any of it. Only three of the 17 agencies publish a price.

Nobody will say what marketing costs. Eighteen of 27 companies have never put a number on their marketing -- not a headcount, not a budget. The three that file with the SEC do; Coinbase's 2025 line is $1.06 billion. Binance publishes its compliance headcount (1,500-plus) and compliance budget ($300 million-plus a year), and nothing about marketing.

"Marketing is the only function in crypto that competes for budget without a published number -- and this year it also lost its best people to the AI labs while the licence did the selling," said Jukka Blomberg, founder of NorthPoint and former Chief Marketing Officer of two international crypto exchanges. "We built the report from the public record so that anyone can check every line, and correct us in the open if a number does not survive its own source."

Method. Public sources only -- no interviews, no anonymous quotes. 27 companies (11 exchanges, 8 foundations, 5 wallets, 3 other licensed firms) and 17 agencies; twelve months to 31 August 2026; dataset frozen 10 September 2026 and re-read 15 September. A job the scan cannot find is not an empty seat; an agency's claim is not a contract. The dataset and method are public under an MIT licence at github.com/jukkablomberg/state-of-crypto-marketing-2026.

Blomberg will be at Bitcoin Helsinki on 25-26 September 2026 to discuss the findings.

About NorthPoint

NorthPoint (NorthPoint Marketing Solutions Oy) is a Helsinki-based crypto marketing firm led by Jukka Blomberg, offering fractional CMO and growth marketing for crypto companies and publishing free, open-source marketing-compliance rule packs for MiCA, FCA, SEC, MAS, VARA and GDPR. State of Crypto Marketing 2026 is the first in its State of the Market series.

About Jukka Blomberg

Jukka Blomberg is a Helsinki-based marketing executive, former CMO of two international crypto exchanges, and author of Crypto Curious?. He writes at jukkablomberg.com.

Media contact: [email protected] Report: northpoint.fi/state-of-crypto-marketing-2026 · Data: github.com/jukkablomberg/state-of-crypto-marketing-2026

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