6 Myths About CoinMarketCap

If you’ve been following CoinMarketCap for a while, you’re probably aware that we keep a low profile and rarely make public statements. That said, recently we’ve come across some rumors and false information about CMC that we feel we must clear up.

When we started CoinMarketCap in 2013, our mission was to present the relative sizes of cryptocurrencies in an accurate and easily digestible manner. We continue to use this mission to guide our decisions. Below we have laid out several of the concerns that have been circulated. We hope that by sharing more details on how we operate CMC, we will be able to continue to maintain your trust and be your go-to authority on market cap rankings and pricing info.

Myth 1: CoinMarketCap accepts payments for coin listings and updates.

This is simply not true. While we encourage donations for great service, CoinMarketCap does not accept payment of any form to bypass listing requirements or to intentionally publish inaccurate information. We evaluate every request with the same level of scrutiny. In the future, we may accept payment to raise the priority of a request, but payment never has and never will change the outcome.

Myth 2: CoinMarketCap engages in acts of insider trading by front running trades for coins before listing them on the site.

There is absolutely no truth to the idea that we trade on any insider information. Even if we did have nefarious intentions, there’s no way that one could reliably profit from simply knowing the exact time that we publish information on our own site. It’s quite common for many of the new listings to have low liquidity (trading volume) when first added to the site. As any experienced trader knows, it is very difficult to build a position on markets with such low liquidity that would be worth the risk, time, resources, or reward for us. Furthermore, new listings with higher liquidity are already established enough to the point where having them visible on CMC is usually a non-event.

Myth 3: Circulating Supply is always straightforward to calculate.

From our FAQ: Circulating Supply is the best approximation of coins/tokens in the hands of the general public.

It is important to note that many people disagree on what it means to be in circulation. Some believe team/developer controlled tokens should be in circulation, some believe that simply “unlocking” tokens makes them circulating, some believe private allocations to large investors/partners are circulating, and so forth. Because of the complexity, supply information indicated in whitepapers and other forms of announcements may deviate from the calculations published on the site.

We work closely with teams and developers to verify supply details on their respective blockchains. When possible, our developers update the supply information dynamically in real time. This is done by tracking the addresses that we consider out of circulation and subtracting the balances of those addresses from the total supply. Gathering and verifying this information is time consuming and is the reason why some coins do not immediately show a circulating supply and market cap. We believe it is better to spend time up front to ensure that the published supply is meaningful and not arbitrary.

Myth 4: CoinMarketCap employees intentionally neglect to update information on specific cryptocurrencies and exchanges.

If an update seems to be taking a long time, it is because we have not yet received adequate verification from the coin/exchange developers to publish the requested change. It is not uncommon for developers to disagree with our methodology and refuse to submit the requested information for verification as a result. It is our policy to wait for clarification rather than to publish data we believe to be inaccurate.

Sometimes even official announcements from teams and/or whitepapers are not sufficient to satisfy our verification requirements due to the possibility of outdated information and conflicting definitions of circulating supply. For these reasons, combined with the sheer number of supply update requests that we receive on a daily basis, supply updates in general require a longer time to process since we consider each one seriously.

Myth 5: CoinMarketCap is run by one person.

We have dedicated teams and roles for each area of operation just like any other business. We continue to be a small team based in New York City keeping our heads down with the daily operations of the site, and have seen no reason to be more public about who we are. This may change over time, but either way, our intention is not to be secretive so much as it is to stay focused on building CoinMarketCap to best serve our users and the cryptocurrency space in general.

Myth 6: CoinMarketCap doesn’t care about the cryptocurrency ecosystem.

This couldn’t be further from the truth. Since 2013, CoinMarketCap’s mission has been to present the relative sizes of cryptocurrencies and give a broad overview of the cryptocurrency market in an easily digestible manner. We believe our commitment to neutrality, anti-censorship, and accuracy of information has played a major role in the site’s success and popularity. We will continue to use our mission and values to guide our decisions as the cryptocurrency space matures and eventually comes into the mainstream.

The Future

We pay close attention to the needs of our users and the community and have been hard at work to realize those needs. In the pipeline we have a commercial API, a mobile application, an updated design, and many other exciting new features that will give our users more control over their experience while using CoinMarketCap. We cannot wait to share these new developments with you!