This document is the operating manual for everyone who writes, edits, or fact-checks for TheWeal. New contributors read it in week one. Returning contributors re-read it at the start of each quarter. It governs every story we publish and every coin or learn page we update.
The short version is: we are accountable to readers, not to platforms, projects, or sources. Every rule below is downstream of that.
Sourcing
Every factual claim on TheWeal must be sourced to one of the following:
- A primary document — a regulatory filing, court docket, exchange disclosure, audited proof-of-reserves attestation, on-chain transaction with a verifiable hash, or signed protocol announcement.
- A named interview with someone in a position to know — a regulator, a protocol developer, an exchange executive, an institutional allocator, a fund operator, a member of a project’s named team.
- A reputable secondary source — a major financial newspaper, the FT, Reuters, Bloomberg, the WSJ — when the original document is not accessible and the secondary outlet’s reporting is itself credibly sourced.
Anonymous sources are permitted only when (a) the source has direct first-hand knowledge of the matter, (b) the claim is materially newsworthy, (c) at least one other independent source corroborates the substance, and (d) the editor on duty has approved the use in writing. We do not use anonymous sources to make speculative claims about future events.
Pseudonymous sources from on-chain communities (e.g. a respected pseudonymous analyst, a known-pseudonymous protocol contributor) may be used as named — provided the pseudonym has a documented track record we can vouch for and the source’s relationship to the story is clear to the reader.
Accuracy & verification
Every numerical claim is verified at the point of publication. Specifically:
- Token prices and market cap figures are pulled from CoinGecko within 60 seconds of publication time.
- On-chain claims (transaction volumes, addresses, balances) are verified against the relevant block explorer (Etherscan, mempool.space, Solscan, etc.) and the exact reference hash or address is included in the source document.
- Quantitative claims about TVL come from DefiLlama, with a snapshot timestamp.
- Stablecoin reserve claims are sourced to the issuer’s most recent attestation report, with the report URL on file.
- Regulatory claims are sourced to the agency’s published document — not to a press release.
If we cannot verify a numerical claim within editorial timelines, we either hold the story or publish it with the unverified claim explicitly hedged and a note on what we attempted to verify.
Attribution
Every story carries a real named byline. Bylines are not generic (“TheWeal Staff”) except in three explicit cases: (1) site-wide policy documents like this one, (2) corrections to articles whose original author is no longer at TheWeal, and (3) data tables compiled from public market data with no editorial interpretation. In all three cases the byline is “TheWeal Editorial”.
When a story is co-reported, both names appear in the byline. When a reporter is briefed by but does not directly quote a source, the source is acknowledged in the methodology section of the story.
Predictions & forecasts
Every price prediction on TheWeal is the output of our deterministic scenario model. We do not publish opinion-only price forecasts. We do not write “I think Bitcoin will hit X” without showing the inputs.
Model output is presented as bear / base / bull scenarios across eight horizons (24-hour through 2030). Each scenario carries a stated assumption set. We do not collapse the bands into a single point estimate when we report on our own forecasts, because doing so misleads readers about the uncertainty involved.
We do not republish other publications’ price predictions without attribution and without flagging that they are speculative.
AI use
TheWeal does not use generative AI to write news stories or analysis pieces. Every article on this site has a human writer who is responsible for every word.
We do use AI tools in three bounded ways:
- Research assistance — summarising public documents (regulatory filings, whitepapers, attestation reports) for human review. Anything cited in a story is independently verified by the reporter.
- Editorial review — grammar, style, headline variations. Final wording is always the human editor’s decision.
- Data ingestion — the prediction model uses no AI. The aggregated news feed on coin pages is filtered by symbol/name match against public RSS sources, with no LLM rewriting of headlines.
If a story includes any AI-generated content (e.g. a synthesised chart caption or a tabular summary), it is disclosed in the methodology section of that story.
The editorial process
Every story passes through three checkpoints before publication:
- Pitch — the reporter files a pitch with their proposed angle, primary sources, expected publication window, and any disclosure flags.
- Draft & editorial review — the assigned editor reviews for sourcing, framing, factual accuracy, and tone. Any quantitative claim is checked against the cited source.
- Final read — a second editor (or the editor-in-chief on sensitive pieces) reads the draft for legal exposure, tone calibration, and whether the headline accurately summarises the body.
Time-sensitive breaking news may be filed by a single reporter and edited by a single editor, with a follow-up second read within four hours of publication.
Corrections
Material errors are corrected on the record. We do not silently edit published articles. The full corrections policy explains the process.
Reader complaints & feedback
Reader-submitted corrections and complaints are handled by an editor on duty (not by the reporter named in the byline) within 48 business hours. Write to [email protected]. We respond to every legitimate complaint, including the ones we ultimately reject. Pattern-matching identical complaints from coordinated sources is documented but otherwise does not change our editorial process.
Style
TheWeal style is direct, hedged when uncertainty is real, and never sensational. We do not use “rockets”, “moons”, “to the moon”, or other community jargon in news copy. We do not personify the market (“the market believed X”). We do not use “pump”, “dump”, “rug”, or “scam” as accusatory shorthand — those words appear only when sourced to a named party or confirmed by primary evidence. The same rules apply to our headlines.