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Unchained

Why CoinMarketCap Launched Its Liquidity Metric - Ep.147

Unchained

Laura Shin

Business News, News, Tech News

4.61.3K Ratings

🗓️ 26 November 2019

⏱️ 70 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Carylyne Chan, chief strategy officer at CoinMarketCap, and Gerald Chee, head of research, discuss the history of CoinMarketCap, why the founder Brandon Chez initially focused on circulating supply to calculate market cap, how the ICO craze has changed the way CoinMarketCap defines circulating supply and how the kimchee premium on the Bitcoin price in Korea at the end of 2017 is influencing the future direction of the website. We cover why CoinMarketCap is branching out into other areas such as metrics, blockchain explorers, hosting conferences and more, how the site has made money historically, the demographics, geographical distribution and behaviors of users on the site, and how CoinMarketCap's web traffic is 90% correlated to the Bitcoin price. We talk about the fake volume problem, how CoinMarketCap decided to address it with a new liquidity metric, the new Data Accountability and Transparency Alliance they formed, and why they are working with some of the exchanges identified by Bitwise as being the most egregious in faking volumes, and how those exchanges fare when it comes to CMC's new liquidity metric. We also cover some of the other ways companies have tried to address the fake volume issue, how CoinMarketCap tries to identify the "true price" for any cryptocurrency (and why USDT makes this hard), and what the circulating supply of Ripple should be. Thank you to our sponsors!  Kraken: https://kraken.com/ CipherTrace: http://ciphertrace.com/unchained Crypto.com: http://crypto.com/ Episode links:  CoinMarketCap: https://coinmarketcap.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/CoinMarketCap Carylyne Chan: https://twitter.com/carylyne Gerald Chee: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gerald-chee-8340a0161/ History of CoinMarketCap: https://blog.coinmarketcap.com/2019/05/01/happy-6th-birthday-data-alliance-block-explorers-and-more/ Incident in which CoinMarketCap shaved $100 billion off the total market cap of crypto assets when Chez decided to remove South Korean exchanges from its calculations: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-programmer-at-the-center-of-a-100-billion-crypto-storm-1516708800   CoinMarketCap's new interest for crypto loans  page: https://www.theblockcrypto.com/post/43460/coinmarketcap-now-publishes-interest-rates-on-cryptocurrencies-allowing-users-to-compare-and-choose Bitwise report on fake trading volume: https://www.sec.gov/comments/sr-nysearca-2019-01/srnysearca201901-5164833-183434.pdf The 10 exchanges Bitwise says have real volume: https://www.bitcointradevolume.com/ CryptoCompare Q3 Exchange Benchmark Report: https://www.cryptocompare.com/media/36569367/cryptocompare_exchange_benchmark_2019_11pdf.pdf DATA: https://coinmarketcap.com/data-transparency-alliance/  Messari benchmarks: https://messari.substack.com/p/more-reliable-cryptoasset-benchmarks Messari report on Ripple’s “circulating supply”: https://messari.io/article/messari-research-ripple-s-market-cap-is-likely-overstated-by-6-1-billion Ripple’s response to Messari report: https://www.coindesk.com/xrp-market-cap-may-be-overstated-by-billions-messari-report-estimates Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hi everyone. Welcome to Unchained, your no-hype resource for all things

0:07.7

crypto. I'm your host Laura Shin. If you enjoy Unchained or Unconfirmed, my other podcast, which now features a weekly news recap

0:15.5

after every interview, please give us a top rating a review in Apple Podcast or wherever you listen to the show.

0:21.6

Cypher Trace cutting edge cryptocurrency intelligence. listen to the show. Ciphercency Intelligence powers anti-money laundering, blockchain analytics, and threat

0:28.6

Intel.

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Leading exchanges, virtual currency businesses, banks, and regulators themselves use

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0:39.8

Crypto.com, get their app and buy crypto at true cost with no fees or markups.

0:45.0

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0:50.0

Want more? Download the crypto.com app today.

0:53.2

Krakhan is the best exchange in the world for buying and selling digital assets.

0:58.8

It has the tightest security, deep liquidity, and a great fee structure with no minimum or hidden fees.

1:06.1

Whether you're looking for a simple Fiat on-ramp or futures trading, Cracken is the place for you.

1:13.0

Today's guests are Carolyn Chan, Chief Strategy Officer at Coin Market Cap, and Gerald Chee, head of research there.

1:19.0

Welcome, Carolyn and Gerald.

1:21.0

Hey Laura, thanks for having us. Hey Laura, thanks for having us.

1:23.0

Hey Laura, nice to be here.

1:25.2

So there's probably no need for a huge introduction, but why don't we start with the most basic

1:31.1

question, which is, what is coin market cap?

1:34.0

Yes, so coin market cap is basically the place you go to when you want to find

1:39.6

information about cryptocurrency and crypto exchanges.

1:43.6

So last year we had about 125 million users and 3.6 billion page views,

...

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