CoinMarketCap, a top website when it comes to monitoring cryptocurrency data, may make a move to allow users to vote on which projects should be listed on the site. It is now one of the most visited websites in the world, and it recently used a Twitter survey to gauge user interest. As of press time, the majority of the respondents have agreed that they are interested.
Would you be interested in voting for projects or exchanges to be listed on CoinMarketCap? ?
— CoinMarketCap (@CoinMarketCap) September 12, 2018
The website is one of the most visited cryptocurrency websites in the world and is used as a reference point for many projects, including altcoins — or cryptocurrencies besides Bitcoin. The recent move for the company to ask whether users want to vote on which projects are listed speaks to the frustration of both traders and investors regarding the website and the way that exchanges manipulate data that are displayed on the website.
Trust and Transparency
CoinMarketCap already tracks the information of over 1,900 projects and coins and has become an invaluable resource to the global cryptocurrency community. It has done this while simultaneously providing data and avoiding breaking news stories or providing analysis as well. The site is run by a programmer in his 30s named Brandon Chez, and the company came under fire when Chez decided to change its price-quote algorithm to exclude the prices from some Korean exchanges.
This led to the website showing prices of dozens of cryptocurrencies being as much as 15% lower. The adjustment on this one website changed the prices of cryptocurrencies globally and led to a discourse about whether the practice was ethical and why the decision wasn’t communicated to users in a clearer fashion.
Taking Steps
The CoinMarketCap Twitter survey comes after recent controversy in the crypto space caused by accusations from Christopher Franko, who tweeted, with email evidence, that Binance was requesting a whopping 400 BTC to list a project on its exchange. Binance responded by categorically denying Franko’s claims.
The Twitter survey also comes two weeks after the Blockchain Transparency Institute published a report claiming that various cryptocurrency exchanges actually “fake” billions of dollars in volume per day, which manipulates the algorithms that CoinMarketCap has in place. This manipulation occurs through wash trading, bots and other methods.
Accountability
To CoinMarketCap’s credit, it appears as though the website’s account putting up the survey is an attempt to test the waters for a new method, to figure out which projects deserve to be tracked. Despite the controversy, the market is still growing year after year, and the website will have to work to be as transparent as possible since the market is expanding.
While many in the cryptocurrency sphere have always understood that there are scammers in every financial community and that there have been initial coin offerings that were uncovered as fraud. The fact is alarming that the most popular cryptocurrency exchanges in the world could be manipulating their trading activity to appear as though there is much more volume than there really is.
CoinMarketCap clearly is taking steps to address this, and it would appear that the company realizes that these exchanges can change the way that traders and investors view a certain project by “faking” trading activity. The website remains in the top-visited 300 websites in the world, and time will tell whether it actually adopts a new voting model when it comes to listing projects, or not.
