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The latest <a href="https://xpertsstudio.com/bitcoin-billionaire-barry-silbert-talks-about-his-next-big-bet/” title=”Bitcoin billionaire Barry Silbert talks about his next big bet”>Bitcoin mystery: Who is behind the tiny non-profit buying a $2 million ad campaign in the Wall Street Journal?
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Over the past three weeks, a pro-Bitcoin group called the Nakamoto Project has been using a decidedly old-school form of outreach to promote the digital currency: A series of print ads in the Wall Street Journal. Photos of the ads have appeared prominently on social media—perhaps proving the campaign to be effective—but they have also given rise to a mystery: Who is picking up the tab for placing ads in a national newspaper whose circulation is estimated to be more than half a million copies?
The ads in question first appeared in late August and, according to the Nakamoto Project, will run weekly for 12 weeks. The ads, a sample of which you can see below, feature messages like “read the fine print on the world’s most argued-about asset.”
Today's ad in the WSJ. pic.twitter.com/Muva13Hmax
— The Nakamoto Project (@NakamotoProjct) August 26, 2026
The organization’s initiative includes an educational website, a series of six essays by “leading thinkers in Bitcoin,” six full-page print ads and 24 quarter-page print ads in the Wall Street Journal, according to one of the Nakamoto Project’s recent social media posts.
The Nakamoto Project’s ads could carry a standard, pre-discount price of about $2.17 million, based on The Wall Street Journal‘s 2026 advertising rate card, which was reviewed by Fortune. That estimate includes roughly $181,000 for each of the six full-page color ads and $45,200 for each of the 24 quarter-page color ads. The rate card did not list prices for sponsored content, so the cost of the essays is unclear.
A representative for Dow Jones, the parent company of the Journal, said the newspaper could not disclose the terms of any specific advertising agreement. Still, the rate card suggests the project’s costs would be substantial even before any discounts are applied.
This price tag raises the question of how the Nakamoto Project, a little-known nonprofit founded in 2023 with three board members, was able to finance an initiative of this scale.
In a conversation with Fortune, the organization’s leaders said that the project’s purpose was to clear up misunderstandings about an asset that has become part of mainstream finance in recent years.
“We thought it was really important to create an honest… engagement with people that maybe are at the precipice of knowing Bitcoin by name, but can’t engage much more than that with their level of understanding,” said Nakamoto Project president Colin Brown, who cofounded the nonprofit with Troy Cross, the chief editor.
Bitcoin, a decentralized protocol, has no company or formal marketing budget behind it. But advocates with financial stakes in the cryptocurrency’s growth have long created groups and campaigns to influence how the public and policymakers see it.
Source: finance.yahoo.com