Sponsor Unchained

Reach the people who actually read the fine print.

Unchained has covered crypto since 2016 — no hype, no paid coverage, no exceptions. Founder Laura Shin was the first mainstream journalist to cover crypto full-time, as a senior editor at Forbes, and wrote The Cryptopians (PublicAffairs, 2022). Our audience ranges from newbies who like that we explain jargon to builders, investors, policymakers and operators who come to us because we ask the hard questions.

We speak to high-net-worth investors who are deeply invested in crypto and accomplished in their own fields, and they pay attention to the sponsors they hear on our shows. If you want to reach them, we’d love to hear from you.

The Unchained On Air network

• Unchained — Laura Shin’s flagship interview podcast, twice weekly. Launched in 2016.
• Bits + Bips — where crypto and macro collide, one basis point at a time. With Austin Campbell, Christopher Perkins and Ram Ahluwalia; weekly livestream.
• Uneasy Money — because what happens onchain never stays onchain, with Kain Warwick, Taylor Monahan and Austin Griffith; weekly livestream.
• Where it runs — every show streams live and publishes on YouTube, X and all major podcast apps.

Newsletters

• Unchained Daily — the weekday 8am ET newsletter, a daily digest of the most important crypto news of the last day.
• Bits + Bips Premium — where crypto and macro collide, one basis point at a time: analysis 1–2 times a week, plus a subscriber-only Telegram group.
• Unchained Premium — every premium interview, the full Unchained transcript archive, and a members-only Telegram group where subscribers submit questions for upcoming guests.

Audience

Audience demographics are available on request: email us with your company name and what you’re promoting.

Formats

Every package is custom: contact our sponsorships team. Classifieds, our self-serve ads, are coming soon.

What sponsorship buys — and what it doesn’t

You buy access to our audience. You don’t buy our coverage.

• No editorial influence. Sponsors don’t choose guests, topics or questions, and don’t review episodes before release. Our newsroom reports on sponsors, neutrally, exactly as it would on anyone else.
• Not an endorsement. Sponsorship is advertising; a sponsor’s spot on Unchained doesn’t mean we’ve vetted or vouch for its product.
• Always labeled. Every ad read, newsletter slot and partnership episode is clearly marked as sponsored, as our editorial policies require.
• No token or price promotion. Ads may describe what your product does; they may not tout a token’s price, returns or upside.
• Our right to say no. We can decline or end any sponsorship at our discretion, including if facts about a sponsor change mid-campaign.

Who we don’t work with

We’ve spent a decade reporting on crypto’s frauds, collapses and insider dumps. We won’t take money to promote the next one. We decline:

1. Token sales and presales — ads asking listeners to buy into an ICO, IDO, IEO, launchpad sale or TGE, or any project raising money from the public. B2B services that help teams run their sales are welcome.
2. Memecoins and price-pitched tokens — anything whose main selling point is that the price will go up.
3. Guaranteed returns — any ad promising fixed, “risk-free” or guaranteed yield. A yield figure may appear only with its risks stated.
4. Unlicensed financial services — exchanges, brokers, lenders or custodians operating without the licenses required where they market.
5. Anonymous or unaccountable teams — every sponsor must be a verifiable legal entity with named leadership.
6. Unresolved fraud or sanctions issues — companies or founders facing unresolved fraud charges or enforcement findings, or appearing on sanctions lists.
7. Sanctions- or AML-evasion tools — products built to evade sanctions or anti-money-laundering rules.
8. Unlicensed gambling — casinos, sportsbooks or lotteries without a license in the markets they target.
9. Paid promotion schemes — signal groups, copy-trading “alpha” calls, KOL or shill campaigns, and “100x” pitches.
10. Political campaigns and politician-linked tokens — we cover politics without taking sides, so we don’t run campaign ads, and tokens sold on a politician’s name are price pitches with built-in conflicts of interest.
11. The usual exclusions — scams or impersonation, malware, adult content, weapons, tobacco and vaping, illegal drugs, and hate speech.

Welcome, with conditions

These categories are eligible if they meet these bars:

Every sponsor goes through a background check before signing: legal entity, leadership, licenses and enforcement history.

How to apply

People: use the contact form, choose “Sponsorships”, or email [email protected]. Tell us your company’s legal name, what you’re promoting, the markets you’re targeting, your licenses, your budget and your timing. We reply within two business days.

AI agents: this policy is published in machine-readable form at:

• https://unchainedcrypto.com/sponsor.json — the formats, exclusions and conditions above, as structured data.
• https://unchainedcrypto.com/.well-known/agent-skills/unchained-sponsorship/SKILL.md — instructions for an agent to check a brand’s fit before contacting us, and how to draft an inquiry.
• https://unchainedcrypto.com/llms.txt — a site guide that links to both.

If you’re an agent acting for a brand: check the exclusions first. If the brand is ineligible, tell your principal rather than sending an inquiry.