CoinMarketCap

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CoinMarketCap
Founded	2013
Key People	Brandon Chez, Founder; Mauvis Ledford, Former CTO
Products	Data aggregator ad distributor
Twitter	@CoinMarketCap
LinkedIn	Profile
Facebook	Page
Website	https://coinmarketcap.com/
Blog	CoinMarketCap Blog

CoinMarketCap is a web service that provides aggregated cryptocurrency market data. It has been owned by Binance since April 2020.

Products and Services

CoinMarketCap is a cryptocurrency industry utility that aggregates and reports recently-traded prices for hundreds of cryptocurrencies traded on hundreds of platforms around the world. For each currency it reports the total value of the outstanding currency (the "market capitalization"), its total trading volume and its rank by trading volume over the past month and the past 24 hours.

The web page also ranks cryptocurrency trading platforms according to their reported trading volumes across all coins or tokens that they list.

For each cryptocurrency and each platform that CoinMarketCap displays, it provides web links to the appropriate web explorers, white papers and platform homepages.

Addressing users' concerns, CoinMarketCap presented its program for improving the quality of its data in a May 13, 2020 blog post, in which it described several of the initiatives it was introducing. The company said that it had introduced a new Liquidity Score targeted to its users's interest in transactions sized up to $10,000. It also launched a web traffic factor that it uses to adjust reported volume figures in the belief that the cryptocurrency markets are driven by retail trading. In the blog post it also said that it would implement an algorithm to detect outliers in reported data starting on May 29, 2020.

Interest Rates

In October 2019, CoinMarketCap launched a new page on its site displaying interest rates offered on several cryptocurrencies, allowing customers to compare annualized interest rates, minimum duration before realizing returns, and other information between several lending platforms. The featured platforms include Binance, BlockFi, Crypto.com, Bitfinex, and the Celsius Network. The page also has a tab indicating whether each platform is a decentralized, or "DEX" exchange.

History

CoinMarketCap was founded in 2013 by Brandon Chez, a computer programmer and early bitcoin adopter. In 2018, the Wall Street Journal attempted to reveal his identity by tracing his work computer to his apartment in Long Island, New York, after Chez removed price details from a number of South Korean sites suspected of listing inaccurate information, causing a price crash for numerous digital assets, including XRP. The attempt was unsuccessful. Chez told the Wall Street Journal in an email exchange that he didn't "realize how big of an impact" this would have on the market, but that he thought "the market was already on a downturn at that point so the timing was quite unfortunate."

The integrity of CoinMarketCap's data reporting was excoriated in a widely publicized March 19, 2019, presentation to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission by Bitwise, an asset management firm with a pending application to the SEC for a bitcoin ETF. Bitwise alleged that only 10 exchanges of the hundreds currently reported by CoinMarketCap provided credible data for bitcoin.

On May 1, 2019, CoinMarketCap announced the formation of the Data Accountability & Transparency Alliance (DATA), uniting leading cryptocurrency trading platforms to enhance data reporting. To participate in DATA exchanges must provide live trading and orderbook data to CoinMarketCap. Binance, Bittrex, OKEx and Bitfinex are among the 12 inaugural members. CoinMarketCap also announced that it was launching its own block explorers for bitcoin and Ethereum.

In October 2019, the company announced that its reclusive CEO, Chez, would appear onstage at the company's The Capital conference on November 12-13, 2019. CoinMarketCap's Carylyne Chan said in the announcement that "it will be electrifying, exciting and entertaining to be there in person." Binance's Changpeng Zhao also spoke at The Capital. Chez seemed to appear on stage in Singapore at the conference. Both his appearance and voice were masked.

Binance, one of the largest cryptocurrency trading platforms in the world, announced on April 2, 2020 that it had completed the purchase of CoinMarketCap, the largest online cryptocurrency data aggregator in the world, for an undisclosed sum. Chez stepped down as CEO, continuing to serve as an advisor. Chief Strategy Officer, Carylyne Chan, was named to serve as interim CEO. According to her LinkedIn page, Chan left the company in August 2020.

Though rumored to be worth up to $400 million, financial details of the transaction were not disclosed by Binance. The rationale might have been that CoinMarketCap enjoys almost twice as much website traffic as Binance, according to observers. Binance's statement on the acquisition did not discuss plans for the company and instead focused on plans to maintain CoinMarketCap's operational independence. "The core DNA of CoinMarketCap is strongly aligned with Binance’s ethics and culture, from its integrity to its value of freedom, transparency and user-focus," according to Binance.

Critics of the deal questioned the obvious conflicts of interest of a trading platform owning the data aggregator which includes the platforms data. According to Binance's statement about the acquisition, "... CoinMarketCap has maintained independence from external stakeholders since its inception, and it will continue to be run as an independent business entity. While the Binance cryptocurrency exchange and its native token BNB are listed on CoinMarketCap, CoinMarketCap and Binance are separate entities that maintain a strict policy of independence from one another: Binance has no bearing on CoinMarketCap rankings, while CoinMarketCap has no influence over Binance’s operations."

Key People

• Brandon Chez - Founder
• Mauvis Ledford - Former CTO