Crypto Trade-R is now Narrative Cortex.
What began as a way to cut through crypto noise has grown into a narrative intelligence system.
Narrative Cortex focuses on how crypto stories form, spread, and fade over time.
It is not about price prediction. It is about context, memory, and explainable signals you can trust.
Join the waitlist for early access.
Follow along as I build Narrative Cortex, sharing progress, decisions, lessons, and early thinking along the way.
Articles exploring how crypto narratives form, spread, and fade. Informed by what Narrative Cortex observes.
Inside the Cortex:
Articles exploring how crypto narratives work, informed by what Narrative Cortex observes across the market.
Why Crypto Narratives Matter and Why Sentiment Dashboards Miss the Point
By Thina Chelvam, Founder | January 16, 2026
Inside the Cortex:
A founder’s notes from the build, the pivots, and the thinking behind Narrative Cortex.
Can We Spot Crypto Hype Before the Price Moves?
My journey building CTR + Cortex (so far)
By Thina Chelvam, Founder | September 21, 2025
The Prep Work That No One Talks About
Laying the Foundations of CTR
By Thina Chelvam, Founder | October 1, 2025
Why a Crypto Radar Matters: Cutting Through the Noise
By Thina Chelvam, Founder | October 6, 2025
Bringing Shanthi On Board: The Next Chapter for CTR
By Thina Chelvam, Founder | October 18, 2025
Why Crypto Trade-R Became Narrative Cortex
By Thina Chelvam, Founder | December 29, 2025
What I’ve Learned Building Narrative Cortex This Year
By Thina Chelvam, Founder | December 31, 2025
A Check-In on the Build
By Thina Chelvam, Founder | January 8, 2026
What 5,156 articles taught me
By Thina Chelvam, Founder | January 29, 2026
My Journey Building CTR + Cortex
By Thina Chelvam - September 21, 2025
When I first started playing with this idea, I had one simple (and slightly ridiculous) question stuck in my head:Can we spot crypto hype before the price moves?It sounded obvious enough, markets move on sentiment, traders live on Twitter/X, Reddit never sleeps, surely you could measure the chatter and see the pump coming? Right?Well… not exactly.
Like any sane person trying to solve crypto sentiment, I opened up… Google Sheets.Yep. I hacked together some code, tried pulling in posts from social sites, and convinced myself I’d built the foundation of the next Bloomberg Terminal.What I actually built was:1. A shrine to error messages.2. A graveyard of half-working API calls.3. A spreadsheet that looked more like spaghetti than usable sentiment data.I restarted the project maybe 15 times. Every time I thought I’d cracked it, something else broke:- API rate limits.- Bots shouting “XRP to $10,000!!!” on repeat.- Data that made zero sense once you actually looked at it.At one point, I was literally scraping posts into Sheets and wondering why it felt like duct-taping the internet to a calculator.But I kept going.
I’ll be honest: most of the time I didn’t really know what I was doing.I was impatient, frustrated, and had no clue how best to analyze what I was pulling. Half the time I wasn’t even sure what I should be analyzing.But those messy experiments taught me a lot:- Data integrity matters. If you don’t clean and filter properly, you’re just charting noise.- Bots are everywhere. If your system can’t handle that, it’s useless.- Free tools are gold. Google Sheets and free APIs got me far enough to prove something was possible.And most importantly: hacking was fun, but if I wanted to build something real, I needed to step back and design it properly.
That’s when I asked myself: What’s the actual end goal here?It wasn’t just to pull random data into a sheet. It was to help traders see real sentiment clearly, hype vs credibility, signal vs noise.That meant building something more ambitious. Not just a dashboard. Not just a spreadsheet.I realized I needed to build… a brain.
That’s where things started to click.- Crypto Trade-R (R = Radar): The dashboard I want to build, clean, retail-friendly, no clutter, no overload, just clear signals.- Cortex: The AI “brain” I’m designing to sit behind it, something that learns, filters the hype and shows what’s real.Institutions already use advanced sentiment platforms. Retail tools exist, but most are noisy, costly, or hard to trust. CTR + Cortex is about bringing clarity and accessibility.
The Journey Ahead
So that’s where I’m at now. I’ve gone from messy Google Sheets experiments to a much clearer vision of what CTR and Cortex should become.This time around, I’m starting fresh, properly designing the foundations, instead of duct-taping APIs into a spreadsheet.Over the next months, I’ll be:- Building CTR into its first live dashboard.- Training Cortex to get smarter at filtering out noise and bots.- Sharing weekly progress updates, the wins, the fails, and the lessons.If you’re curious to follow along (or want early access once the first version is live), you can join here: (CTR waitlist.)This is just the beginning. The question that kicked it all off still drives me:Can we spot crypto hype before the price moves?I don’t have the answer yet, but I’m building towards it.
Not financial advice. Just one person, a lot of coffee, and way too many error messages.
Laying the Foundations of CTR
By Thina Chelvam, Founder | October 1, 2025
When I wrote the first blog, it was about the question that kicked this whole thing off: can we spot crypto hype before the price moves? That wasn’t just a thought experiment. I tested it, hacked together spreadsheets, pulled data, and proved there was something real here.Now it’s time to move from testing into building. And before you can build something that lasts, you need solid foundations. Otherwise it’s like trying to build a house on sand. You can have the fanciest designs in the world, but if the foundation isn’t there, it’s just going to sink.
Trello has basically become my second brain. Every random thought, bug, or “wouldn’t it be cool if…” goes straight into a card. If you imagine a wall covered in sticky notes, this is that, but way more organised and way less likely to fall off and get lost under the couch. It keeps me honest and makes sure nothing slips through the cracks.
GitHub is where all the real magic will live. It’s like a giant locker that keeps every version of CTR’s brain safe. Think of it like a timeline of progress. No more random files sitting in folders with names like “final-final-v4-FIXED.xlsx” (we’ve all been there). With GitHub, I can track changes, roll things back if something breaks, and keep everything in one clean place.
Supabase is my filing cabinet. A very big, very organised one that doesn’t complain no matter how much stuff I throw into it. All the signals CTR needs will flow into here. It’s the place Cortex will dig into when it starts figuring out what’s buzz and what’s just noise.
Putting these three together gives me the structure I need. Trello keeps the ideas moving, GitHub protects the build, and Supabase stores the information. It’s not glamorous, but it’s the kind of groundwork that makes sure I can actually scale this thing later without it falling apart.
Next up is feeding CTR its first taste of real crypto chatter. That’s when it gets exciting. Once the pipes are connected and the data starts flowing, we’ll see the first raw signals start to appear. They won’t be polished yet, but they’ll be real, and that’s the step that turns groundwork into momentum.There’s still a lot to build, but the direction is clear and the foundations are ready to carry it.
I’d love to bring you into this journey as I build CTR, step by step, and hear your thoughts along the way.- What’s the most frustrating thing about following crypto right now?
- If CTR could make crypto easier, what would you want it to do for you first?You can reach me through the contact section below. I read everything and your input will help shape the way this radar works.
By Thina Chelvam, Founder | October 6, 2025
Lately, I’ve been thinking about how easy it is to get lost in the noise of crypto.Everywhere you look, there’s a new chart, a hot take, or a bold prediction. It’s exciting but also exhausting.That’s really why I started building Crypto Trade-R, to make sense of the chaos and give beginners and traders a clear radar instead of just more noise.
Crypto is in the news, all over Twitter, in Telegram groups, on Reddit threads, and even in casual chats with mates who swear they’ve found the “next big thing.”At its core, crypto is digital money built on blockchain. It trades 24/7, across the globe, and it moves fast. Sometimes insanely fast.But it’s not just fundamentals that drive prices. It’s sentiment, hype, buzz, and fear.The mood of the market can send coins flying or crashing within hours.
There are thousands of coins out there. Every day you’re hit with a flood of opinions, charts, memes, and “breaking news.” It’s overwhelming.Questions like these come up constantly:- Which coins are actually being talked about?
- Is that Twitter thread just shilling, or is it picking up real traction?
- Is this headline important, or just filler content?Even if you’ve been in crypto for years, keeping up with all of it is a full-time job. For anyone starting out, it’s basically impossible.
This is where Crypto Trade-R comes in. Think of it like a radar screen. Instead of drowning in endless data, you get a clear view of the signals that actually matter.
CTR isn’t financial advice. It’s a filter.It shows you where attention is going, whether the market mood is bullish, bearish, or neutral, and which coins are worth keeping on your radar.The goal is simple: save time, cut out the noise, and make crypto trends understandable without needing to live on charts around the clock.
Here’s how the CTR dashboard is shaping up:- A high-level summary of the overall market mood
- Coin-by-coin signals: which ones are buzzing, what the sentiment looks like, and how price is trending
- Alerts for when something big shifts, such as a surge in hype or a sudden sentiment dropIt’s designed to give you a quick, simple snapshot so you can focus on what matters instead of wading through endless chatter.
If you’re new to crypto, CTR helps you understand the market without getting lost.If you’re experienced, it surfaces signals you might miss. For everyone, it’s about trading smarter, not louder.This is why I’m building CTR. Because crypto doesn’t need to be overwhelming. It just needs a radar.
By Thina Chelvam, Founder | October 18, 2025
Over the last few months, I’ve been shaping Crypto Trade-R into something that feels bigger than just an idea. It’s becoming real, a platform built to help traders cut through the noise and see the market with clarity.And now, that mission just got a major boost.
I’m beyond excited to share that Shanthi Murugan has joined us as Head of Marketing and Growth.We caught up recently to talk about the future, where CTR is heading, how to grow it with purpose, and how to make it stand out in a space that moves fast and changes even faster. That conversation reminded me why the right people matter more than anything else.Shanthi isn’t just another marketing lead. She has spent over 18 years driving e-commerce and brand growth across Australia’s beauty, wellness, and lifestyle industries, leading creative and digital strategy at places like Adore Beauty, A-Beauty, and Haircare Group. She has helped build movements around inclusivity, customer experience, and storytelling that reach deeper than metrics.What stood out to me most is her ability to blend strategy with heart. She knows how to grow brands that people actually believe in, the kind that earn trust, not just clicks.CTR has always been about clarity, making crypto simpler, smarter, and more human. Shanthi brings that same energy: calm, values-driven, and relentlessly focused on purpose and progress.As we move toward our MVP and start building the community around it, her leadership will shape how we connect with people, not just traders, but anyone who believes that technology and intuition can work together to make sense of the chaos.Welcome aboard, Shanthi. Let’s build something people feel proud to be part of.
By Thina Chelvam, Founder | December 29, 2025
This one happened fast.Thought of the name, checked the domain, bought it, set everything up, changed emails, broke a few things, fixed them.No big workshop. No 12-slide rebrand deck. Just one of those moments where something clicks and you know you can’t ignore it.
Crypto Trade-R was always about cutting through noise.
Spotting hype early.
Turning chaos into something you can actually understand.That part hasn’t changed at all.But as I started building, I realised something important.I wasn’t really building a trading tool.
I was building a brain.A system that watches how narratives form, spread, peak, and fade before price even enters the conversation.
As the system started taking shape, I noticed I was spending less time thinking about trades and more time thinking about stories.Where they come from.
Why they suddenly accelerate.
Why some narratives stick around while others disappear overnight.I kept asking myself, “If price didn’t exist, would this still matter?”When the answer kept being yes, it was obvious this was bigger than a trading dashboard. It was about memory, context, and understanding how attention moves through the market.That’s when the name started to feel wrong.
No drama. No long pause.I had the thought, checked the domain, and hit buy.That’s honestly how a lot of good things start.Crypto Trade-R still exists as the front door. The friendly face.
Narrative Cortex is the engine room.Same mission. Clearer identity.
Narrative Cortex isn’t here to predict prices or shout BUY or SELL.It’s here to answer better questions.
- Why is this story appearing everywhere right now?
- Where did it start?
- Has this happened before?
- Is this building or already decaying?If you care about context, memory, and signal over noise, you’re in the right place.
By Thina Chelvam, Founder | December 31, 2025
When I first started thinking about Narrative Cortex, my instinct was a familiar one.Start with the noise.
Look at Twitter, Reddit, YouTube.
See what people are excited or worried about.
Then work backwards to figure out why.That approach makes sense in crypto.
The market is fast, emotional, and loud.But the longer I sat with it, the more it felt off.If you start with hype, hype ends up deciding what matters.
And that’s not a great foundation for understanding anything properly.
Social platforms are not neutral.They’re shaped by bots, incentives, engagement loops, and repetition.
Volume can look like truth.
Speed can look like importance.By the time something is trending, the story is often already distorted.
And when you later try to explain why it mattered, the answer becomes weak.Because people were talking about it isn’t enough.
Over time, my thinking shifted.Instead of asking what everyone was reacting to, I started asking a simpler question.What is actually being reported as happening?Narratives don’t start on social platforms.
They start with events, filings, announcements, decisions, or claims.
Journalists report them.
Other outlets either pick them up or don’t.That spread, or lack of it, tells you a lot.
Narrative Cortex starts with foundations.It ingests raw news and source material and preserves it as it appears.
Nothing is rewritten. Nothing is guessed.From there, the system looks for one thing.Is this spreading across independent sources?One article doesn’t mean much.
When multiple independent outlets cover the same thing in a short window, that’s when something real starts to form.Only after that do reactions matter.Was there hype around it?
Did Twitter talk about it?
Did it spread socially or stay quiet?Reaction becomes context, not the driver.
AI isn’t deciding what matters here.It doesn’t trigger signals.
It doesn’t chase excitement.
It doesn’t guess.AI comes in after something has already been confirmed as real.It helps interpret what the narrative is about.
It adds context, classification, and clarity.That means as AI models get better, Narrative Cortex gets better naturally.
The foundation stays stable.
The interpretation improves.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been quietly building the foundations of this system.Narrative Cortex is already ingesting real news, preserving raw sources, and tracking how stories begin to spread across independent outlets.
Right now, I’m letting it run and observing how narratives form, stall, or fade over time.The focus isn’t speed or features.
It’s understanding behaviour before scaling anything.
I’m not chasing users.
I’m not chasing growth.
I’m not chasing hype.I’m chasing time.Time to build narrative memory.
Time to understand which stories sustain and which disappear.
Time to reason clearly about what is actually moving in crypto.Narrative Cortex isn’t about reacting faster than everyone else.
It’s about understanding better than most.That direction didn’t appear all at once.
It emerged by sitting with the problem long enough.And that’s exactly how I plan to keep building it.
If you’ve been following along, asking questions, or quietly reading from the sidelines, thank you. Genuinely.This is still early. Still being built. Still very real.Wishing you a calm, focused end to the year and a clear start to the next.Thina
By Thina Chelvam, Founder | January 8, 2026
Narrative Cortex started as a simple question that kept coming back to me.How do crypto narratives actually form, and why does it always feel like most tools explain things only after the fact?At first, I thought this would mostly be about pulling data, scoring it, and surfacing insights. It turns out the real challenge has been much deeper. It has been about trust, memory, and being honest about what the system knows and does not know at any given moment.This is not a launch post. It is just a check-in on where things are at. The progress, the friction, and the moments where things finally started to make sense.
In the beginning, things were fairly straightforward.
Pull XRP related articles, process them, look for patterns, move on.It worked, at least on the surface. But as soon as I started thinking about how this system would look months or years down the track, something felt off.I could see what was happening now, but it was much harder to confidently answer how we got there. Even harder was answering what the system actually believed on a specific day in the past.That gap mattered more than I expected.
Most of the hard work so far has not been about adding features. It has been about slowing myself down and questioning assumptions.How do you avoid rewriting history once you know the outcome?
How do you keep earlier signals intact, even when they turn out to be wrong?
How do you build something that can grow without losing its memory?A lot of late nights went into pulling things apart, putting them back together, and sometimes rolling changes back entirely. There were plenty of moments where something technically worked, but did not sit right. Over time, I learned to listen to that feeling.
The biggest turning point came when I changed how the system thinks about information at its core.Instead of starting with a coin and asking what the data says about it, I flipped the question. What are publishers talking about, and which assets naturally show up in those conversations?That change simplified a lot of things. It made the system feel calmer, more grounded, and much easier to reason about over time. Most importantly, it allowed history to stay intact instead of being constantly reinterpreted.Once that clicked, the rest of the system started to fall into place.
Right now, Narrative Cortex is intentionally narrow.It looks only at RSS news.
It focuses on a single asset, XRP.
It keeps raw information untouched.
It produces signals that are explainable and confidence-scored.
It does not care about price.Even with just five to ten days of data, the system can already show which narratives are forming, which ones are gaining strength, and which ones quietly fade away. It can also show what it believed at the time, not what looks obvious in hindsight.That part is the most important to me.
There are plenty of things I could add right now, and I am choosing not to.No social platforms yet.
No polished interface.
No monetisation.Not because those things are unimportant, but because they come later. None of them matter if the foundation is not solid.For now, getting the spine right matters more than moving fast.
Narrative Cortex is still early, but it finally feels stable in the way that counts.The system now has a memory I trust. One that does not need to be rewritten. One that can grow quietly over time without losing context.From here, progress will probably look less dramatic. Fewer big changes and more steady accumulation. That feels like the right phase to be in.The goal was never to be the loudest or the fastest.
It was to build something that stays honest over time.That is what I am focused on now.
By Thina Chelvam, Founder | January 16, 2026
After spending enough time around crypto markets, one thing becomes pretty clear.Markets do not move just because of numbers.
They move because of stories people believe.Regulation fears. ETF optimism. Court cases. Protocol upgrades. Institutional interest. Centralisation debates. These narratives start quietly, spread unevenly, pick up momentum, and sometimes fall apart.Price reacts later.That is why I have always felt that most sentiment dashboards, while impressive on the surface, miss something important.
At any given moment, price reflects belief, not reality.People are not reacting to facts in isolation. They are reacting to what they think other people believe about those facts.That belief is shaped by narratives.
Who is talking.
Where the story originates.
How often it appears.
And how it changes over time.Narratives do not arrive fully formed. They start weak, gain strength through repetition, get challenged, and either solidify or fade.If you want to understand markets, you need to understand this process.Most tools do not.
Sentiment dashboards promise clarity. They show scores, gauges, and charts that feel objective and precise.Positive sentiment. Negative sentiment. Bullish. Bearish.The issue is not that sentiment is useless. The issue is that it gets flattened into something it is not.
Most dashboards show rolling sentiment averages. Yesterday blends into today. Last week blends into now.You lose the moment when belief actually shifted.You cannot easily answer questions like:
When did this narrative first appear?
What evidence existed at the time?
How confident would I have been then, not now?Once time is collapsed, sentiment starts to look smart while quietly relying on hindsight.
Not all sources are equal.A regulatory filing is not the same as a tweet.
A court document is not the same as a speculative blog post.Most sentiment systems treat everything as interchangeable input. Volume wins, not credibility.What matters is not how loud a narrative is, but where it comes from and how it spreads.Without source context, you are measuring noise more than meaning.
Sentiment dashboards usually show numbers without explanations.You see a score, but not why it exists.
You see a change, but not what caused it.
You are expected to trust the output without understanding the reasoning.That does not build confidence. It forces blind faith or complete dismissal.Neither is useful.
Narratives only make sense if you can look back without rewriting history.A system that updates its view of yesterday based on what happened today is not intelligent. It is just convenient.Real understanding requires preserved belief.What did the system believe at that moment?
What evidence was available then?
How confident was that belief?
What risks were present?If you rewrite the past to fit the outcome, you lose the ability to evaluate judgment.Most tools do this automatically. They overwrite history without admitting it.
Crypto has an obsession with prediction.What will happen next.
Where price is going.
What to buy or sell.That obsession creates pressure to overstate confidence and simplify complexity.Narrative intelligence is different.It is not about predicting outcomes.
It is about understanding belief formation.It asks quieter questions:
What story is forming right now?
How strong is it?
Who is reinforcing it?
What could weaken it?
How has it changed compared to the past?This kind of understanding sits upstream of prediction. It is also more honest and more reusable.
Traditional backtesting focuses on outcomes.What would have made money.
What worked.
What failed.Narrative replay focuses on reasoning.Did the narrative form early or late?
Did confidence grow with evidence or jump too quickly?
Did risk show up before clarity?
Did the story resolve or quietly fade?A narrative that fades is not a failure.
A narrative that grows without evidence is a warning.You only see this if belief is preserved as it was, not rewritten after the fact.
A credible narrative intelligence system should:- Treat sources as first class entities
- Preserve raw data without modification
- Record belief states with timestamps
- Separate narrative signal from price
- Make confidence and risk explicit
- Never recompute the past
- Explain itself in plain languageAnything else is decoration.
Crypto is maturing.As markets become more institutional, narrative risk starts to matter just as much as volatility.Regulation. Legal action. Governance decisions. Media framing. Institutional perception.These are not captured well by indicators. They are captured by memory.The next generation of crypto intelligence will not be louder or flashier.
It will be calmer, slower, and more accountable.
Markets are not spreadsheets.
They are collective belief systems.If you want to understand where a market is going, you need to understand what it believes, when that belief started, and why.Sentiment dashboards tell you how loud the room is.Narrative intelligence tells you what story the room is telling and how long it has been telling it.That difference matters.
By Thina Chelvam, Founder | January 29, 2026
Over the last month, I have been deep in the work, hardening, fixing, and strengthening Narrative Cortex, while letting it run continuously in the background.
No new features.
No new assets.
No social data.
Just one asset, XRP, pulling news from RSS end to end, on its own.
What surprised me was not what the system found.
It was how much it ignored.
Over the last 30 days, the system reviewed:
• 5,156 crypto news articles
• Across 18 different publishers
• Running continuously, day and night
It did not start with 18 publishers.
Sources were added gradually, in stages, as the system matured. That was deliberate. The goal was to avoid overwhelming the pipeline with noise before understanding how signals actually form.
Out of all of that, it surfaced:
• 56 moments worth paying attention to
That works out to roughly one signal for every 92 articles reviewed.
At first glance, that sounds underwhelming.
But it is actually the whole point.
Imagine you are standing in a busy café all day.
You hear:
• Hundreds of conversations
• People talking about everything
• Most of it repeating, reacting, or just noise
Now imagine your job is not to listen. It is to say:
“Something important just started happening over there.”
You would not interrupt every time someone mentions a topic once.
You would wait until:
• Multiple people start saying the same thing
• Independently
• Over a short period of time
Only then would you look up.
That is what Narrative Cortex is doing.
Most articles do not matter on their own.
One headline does not make a narrative.
A signal only appears when patterns form. For example:
• Several different publishers begin framing the same idea
• A topic keeps resurfacing instead of disappearing
• Coverage tightens around a shared theme
Some signals start small, with a single source gaining momentum.
Fewer grow into something broader, with multiple publishers aligning.
Very few become real, confirmed narratives.
That funnel is intentional.
Out of thousands of articles:
• The system stayed quiet most of the time
• When it did surface something, it usually relied on multiple independent sources
• It updated its internal belief as new information arrived
There were also days with hundreds of articles and no signals at all.
That told me two important things:
1. It is not reactive
2. It is not trying to look busy
Silence, in this context, is a signal too.
Some of the strongest signals did not appear on the noisiest days.
They appeared on days where:
• Fewer articles were published
• But the same idea kept showing up
• Framed similarly across different sources
Narratives do not form because there is more news.
They form because the same story refuses to go away.
It would be easy to add more assets right now.
It would make the dashboard busier.
It would look more impressive.
But after watching one asset closely, I realised something important.
If you do not understand the shape of the signal at a small scale, adding more only multiplies confusion.
Before expanding, I wanted to be confident that:
• Noise stays noise
• Patterns earn attention
• And when the system says something matters, it can explain why
Letting it run quietly taught me that lesson better than more code ever could.
This is not a launch post.
It is not a promise of what is coming.
It is simply an honest checkpoint.
Watching a system observe the world, and learning from what it chose not to say.