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. 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. 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. 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. 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.
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. 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. 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!
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. 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. 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. 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. 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.
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. 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. 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!