Being employed by a crypto project is reportable conflict of interest, but not simple holdings. I privately asked one of the editor exactly that and was told t

Being employed by a crypto project is reportable conflict of interest, but not simple holdings. I privately asked one of the editor exactly that and was told that they don't consider it reportable CoI unless you own "a significant stake in the project." They are effectively applying the same standard to crypto that other journals apply to stockholding and companies. Here is the policy, https://ledgerjournal.org/ojs/ledger/conflicts https://ledgerjournal.org/ojs/ledger/conflicts So basically if you own 200k USD of bitcoin you don't have to report it because it's not a significant stake of all bitcoins. Similarly, someone who owns 200k USD of Google stock wouldn't (in most scientific journals that I have checked) have to report it when peer reviewing a paper from Google, because it's not a large stake of Google's business. Now, whether that makes sense for crypto (as opposed to stocks in public companies) or stocks is another question. Personally I would prefer that scientists (and specifically peer reviewers) report all financial stakes in companies or projects that are worth more than some amount, but that's not common. It's definately something to remember when reading ANY peer-reviewed journal article that directly relates to someone's business. (Also it's fairly common to see an article in a big journal with no CoI statement because the author went on to start a company based on that publication AFTER it was reviewed. Did they plan to do this? Hard to say. IMO, it's important to google authors of dubious articles because CoI statements are almost never updated, even if the conflict is clear in retrospect. And journals should be pushed to update CoI on previously published work.)