About

Keep up with the happenings in the tech world without all the boosterism. Cryptocurrency critic and technology researcher Molly White publishes Citation Needed, a newsletter that critically examines the tech sector, with a particular emphasis on cryptocurrency, cutting through industry hype to explore technology's tangible effects on people's lives. She provides clear analysis and thorough explorations of stories that mainstream coverage often overlooks or fails to challenge.

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Pay what you want

All content is free and available to all readers, and will continue to be that way. Paywalls suck and you won’t find them here. What you receive will be exactly the same regardless of whether you choose to pay for a subscription or not.

That said, paid subscribers are crucial to allowing me to continue doing this kind of research and writing, and so if you are able to support my work I would be immensely grateful. You will also get access to additional features including commenting.

I understand that not everyone is willing or able to support at the same rate, so I’ve set up a system to allow you to pay what you want. The suggested rate is $10/month or $100/year, which comes out to around $2.50 a newsletter. But whatever you want to or can afford to pay is just fine with me, and deeply appreciated.

If you really love my work, there’s also a founding member option where you can pledge a custom amount for an annual subscription. This is also a great option if you happen to have, say, an employer-sponsored reading or education budget.

Who is Molly?

A photograph of Molly White sitting at a table in a video studio. She's a white woman with long brown hair that's shaved on one side, she has brown eyes, and she's wearing a black and white striped shirt and black blazer. There is a colorful cartoon background behind her. She's smiling and looking at someone out of frame.

Molly White is a researcher, software engineer, and prominent critic of cryptocurrencies and blockchain-based projects. Besides Citation Needed, she is best known for her website Web3 is Going Just Great, which documents only some of the many disasters in the cryptocurrency and web3 industries, and for her Follow the Crypto election spending tracker.

Gerrit De Vynck, The Washington Post.

Years spent online researching esoteric Internet cultures have made White a rare figure who can maneuver the technically complex, meme-filled world of crypto, translating it into digestible prose.

Mike Masnick, TechDirt.

Molly White [is] one of the best critics of tech-boosterism...

The New Republic.

[Molly White is] an excellent tech critic in her own right and a reliable skeptic about overhyped arenas in the tech kingdom, offering moments of pause and reflection amid Silicon Valley’s headlong breakthroughs and the moral dilemmas they often occasion.

John Naughton, The Guardian.

Molly White [is] a remarkable young woman who is the sanest critic of the crypto frenzy. ... [S]he’s become the sharpest critic of crypto boosterism on the web.

Michael Hiltzik, LA Times.

Molly White is the model of an indefatigable and intrepid journalist. ... Anyone who follows crypto scams is familiar with White’s work.

This website and newsletter is built with the open source Ghost software, and hosted by Molly White (more details). Additional cloud services are generously provided by Fastly through their Fast Forward program.

Besides brief quotations or interviews (which are clearly marked), all writing in this newsletter is by Molly White. She does not use AI tools to generate the writing or images in the newsletter (except when writing about AI and including examples of its output, which is clearly marked).

Please read Molly’s disclosures for her writing about cryptocurrency.