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.
The Nakamoto Project is the latest organization to launch such an effort focused on public awareness of Bitcoin.
The print initiative comes as the Nakamoto Project has maintained a limited social media presence. Its X account has just over 2,000 followers and has posted less than 10 times since its creation in July 2023.
Brown and Cross initially spoke with Fortune about the campaign’s educational mission, but did not respond to later questions about the project’s finances and operations.
Funding questions
The Nakamoto Project was founded in 2023 and is registered in Sheridan, Wyoming, as a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organization. According to ProPublica’s Nonprofit Explorer database, the organization is classified under “educational institutions and related activities.”
Before founding the Nakamoto Project, Brown worked on national and global advertising campaigns for brands including Nike and 20th Century Fox. Cross, a longtime Bitcoin advocate, is a fellow at the Bitcoin Policy Institute, a research and advocacy think tank, and a philosophy professor at Reed College. Andrew Perkins, the project’s head of research, is also a professor of marketing and international business at Washington State University.
During its first year of operations, the project reported receiving $275,000 in contributions. While the IRS requires public charities to report certain major donors, federal law allows them to redact contributors’ names and addresses from public copies of the filing.
However, the public filing reviewed by Fortune lists just one contributor for 2023, suggesting the project’s initial funding came from a single source.
In the interview with Fortune, Brown said the initiative was “funded by the generosity of Bitcoiners at large,” claiming the nonprofit received “generous donations, both large and small, from people that are mission-aligned.”
Across 2023 and 2024, the organization reported spending more than $204,000. Of that, $180,457—more than 88%—went toward executive compensation and “contract labor,” while $12,313, or 6%, went to advertising and promotion.
Since then, the Nakamoto Project has reported no additional grants or donations in its publicly available filings, although its 2025 filing has not yet been made public.
Notably, the project’s tax return was prepared by Satoshi Pacioli Accounting Services, a Bitcoin-focused accounting firm named after Bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, and Luca Pacioli, a Renaissance-era figure often called the father of accounting.