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When David Yaffe-Bellany first learned about the complicated world of cryptocurrency from a tech-savvy high school friend, his reaction was one of polite interest.
That changed in 2021, when an editor at The New York Times — where Mr. Yaffe-Bellany had previously worked as a reporting fellow on the Business desk — reached out about a new opportunity to cover cryptocurrency for the paper.
“In 10 minutes of research, it immediately became clear that it was a great beat with a colorful cast of characters involved in the crypto world, and risks that had gone underexplored in some of the coverage,” said Mr. Yaffe-Bellany, 28, a technology reporter for The Times who has covered the crypto industry since 2022.
Three years and more than 300 bylines later, Mr. Yaffe-Bellany has chronicled the peaks and valleys of the nascent industry, including the collapse of the cryptocurrency founder Sam Bankman-Fried’s company FTX. Last month, he collaborated on a multicountry investigation into two giant crypto and artificial intelligence deals involving President Trump.
“I strongly believe the best stories come from being somewhere in person,” said Mr. Yaffe-Bellany, whose reporting has taken him to Singapore, Spain and the United Arab Emirates. “Often, at a crypto conference, you can just walk up and have a conversation with somebody who it might take weeks to get on the phone, because they have three layers of P.R. people around them.”
In an interview, Mr. Yaffe-Bellany, who is based in New York, shared how he navigates covering a beat that is constantly evolving and the lessons he has learned in three years of reporting on the industry. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.
What keeps you excited about covering crypto?
People who you think have been sort of washed away by previous scandals re-emerge and are doing things again. Tracking that cycle of crisis and renewal is pretty exciting. Crypto is still a relatively young industry, and some of the guardrails that bigger industries put up around themselves haven’t been fully established.
Can you tell me about some memorable experiences on the ground?
One of the most important early reporting experiences I had in covering crypto was in 2022, when I went to the Bahamas for a conference FTX was holding. It was for a profile of Sam Bankman-Fried. It was about six months before his company collapsed, and he was charged with defrauding people out of billions of dollars.
I went to a beach party at the luxury resort where all the FTX employees were living at the time. It was a really vivid illustration of that moment in crypto when people were making tons of money and spending it in a very profligate way. Getting up-close exposure to that world was really helpful when that world imploded a few months later.
Have you found that people are open to talking to you?
Somebody warned me when I started covering crypto that it would be difficult to get people to talk. But I actually haven’t found that at all. I think people in the crypto world are surprisingly open given the circles they move in and how they’re aligned politically. But when you’re in a young industry and trying to sell something to the public, I think you feel a need to talk to reporters; there’s also a craving for legitimacy that I think they feel exposure in The New York Times could bring them.
Is your age a benefit?
It is, to a degree. Crypto is an industry dominated by a lot of young people, and a lot of men, frankly. A lot of people in the crypto world are probably more prone to trusting a young male reporter.
What has been the greatest surprise?
That a lot of the time, very simple things are being cloaked in complicated terminology to make people think they’re more sophisticated or impressive than they actually are.
How are you fact-checking the various things that you’re hearing or being told?
Sources often expect that you won’t need to know their real name, and that if you know their online pseudonym, that’s enough. That can be a challenge, because some people aren’t willing to be quoted under their real name. It’s just a cultural thing in crypto. People are very paranoid about personal safety.
What’s a favorite story you’ve done so far?
I did a story in 2023 about a company called Three Arrows Capital, which was a big Singapore-based cryptocurrency hedge fund that collapsed the year before. The two founders, Su Zhu and Kyle Davies, sort of disappeared from the public sphere, but they hadn’t faced any meaningful consequences. So I met with Su in Singapore and Kyle in Barcelona and wrote about the crazy, extravagant lifestyle that they had during the year after the company crumbled. They told me about trips to Bali and taking shrooms and meditating on the beach and learning to surf. It was this really interesting window into how sometimes there aren’t consequences when you screw up and your company collapses.