It’s a clash between the CEO of the exchange Crypto.com, Kris Marszalek, and Coinmarketcap, the platform that makes rankings in the cryptocurrency world.
Summary
Coinmarketcap’s ranking that doesn’t convince Crypto.com
The reason for the contention is that Crypto.com has suddenly plummeted in Coinmarketcap’s exchange ranking: it is in 16th place. But if you take Coingecko, the other ranking platform of the cryptocurrency world, Crypto.com is second. In both cases, leading the ranking is Binance.
This difference in positions was commented on by CEO Kris Marszalek as follows:
Merry Christmas to team @CoinMarketCap who a week after my response to their poorly worded tweet arbitrarily reduced our exchange ranking to 14th 😁
We are 2nd/3rd on @coingecko so you guys know where to look for real and market neutral data 🤣
— Kris | Crypto.com (@kris) December 25, 2021
“Merry Christmas to team @CoinMarketCap who a week after my response to their poorly worded tweet arbitrarily reduced our exchange ranking to 14th We are 2nd/3rd on @coingecko so you guys know where to look for real and market neutral data.”
The Baby Doge Coin team also responded to this tweet by pointing out that they had similar issues: Coinmarketcap refused to verify their supply, while on the contrary, on Coingecko, defined as a neutral source, they are ranked #218. In any case, writes Baby Doge, a decentralized version would be needed.
The past
It all stems from the problems had by Coinmarketcap a few weeks ago that literally made the prices of many cryptocurrencies completely upside down with sudden astronomical rises. That had caused much hilarity on Twitter, where numerous users had joked that for a few moments, they felt like millionaires, when in fact, the market was not at all in such a volatile phase.
Following the incident, an exchange of jokes started between Coinmarketcap and the Fintwit account about hiring a new programmer. The Coinmarketcap account retorted that Coinbase and Crypto.com, which had shown CMC’s inflated prices, should also do the same.
Crypto.com’s CEO’s reply was lapidary:
“You don’t have to tell us anything — we are already working on removing
@CoinMarketCap’s unreliable price feed from our product.”
Coingecko’s response also followed:
Hey Kris 😉 pic.twitter.com/bgJ8mf73Or
— CoinGecko (@coingecko) December 15, 2021
According to Crypto.com’s CEO, it was probably this Twitter argument that triggered the exchange’s plummet in rankings on Coinmarketcap.
Comparison of rankings
Coinmarketcap provides a ranking of the best exchanges that are evaluated based on an “exchange score” and not just trading volume.
This exchange score is based on several factors:
- Web Traffic Factor;
- Average Liquidity;
- Volume;
- Confidence that the volume reported by an exchange is legitimate.
Each factor involves the assignment of a score from 0 to 10. Binance has a score of 9.9, while Crypto.com stops at 6.5, although it is not possible to see how this score is generated.
Just today, following CEO Kris Marszalek’s tweet, Coinmarketcap in turn tweeted:
In order to continue to provide accurate crypto data, we've recently updated our exchange rankings, as our algorithm identified wash trading from some platforms.
— CoinMarketCap (@CoinMarketCap) December 27, 2021
“In order to continue to provide accurate cryptocurrency data, we recently updated our exchange rankings as our algorithm identified wash trading from certain platforms.”
Crypto.com is not mentioned, but the suspicion that it refers to this very exchange is there.
On Coingecko, on the contrary, Crypto.com is listed in the second position. In this case, the Trust Score that determines the ranking is due to several factors such as:
- web traffic;
- liquidity and trading activity;
- scalability;
- API;
- cybersecurity assessment;
- team presence;
- past incidents.
Keeping all these indicators in mind, Crypto.com has a score of 10, just like Binance, which however has much higher trading volumes ($14 billion in 24 hours vs. Crypto.com’s $3 billion)
The Binance Factor
Actually, Coinmarketcap’s ranking had generated several controversies because Binance actually owns CMC. At the time of its acquisition, more than one person was not convinced of the goodness of the exchange ranking.
The CEO of Binance, Changpeng Zhao, answered directly to these controversies claiming that CMC was independent of Binance; nevertheless, CMC is part of the Binance ecosystem, so he would continue to tweet on Coinmarketcap.
The fact remains that Coinmarketcap is far too centralized, and then maybe the Baby Doge Coin team is right when they say that we would need a decentralized ranking.
