CoinMarketCap Announces Its First Ever Acquisition

By Rishma Banerjee

CoinMarket Cap, which is a cryptocurrency price and volume data provider, has recently announced its first-ever acquisition, which, according to the company, will improve the platform’s analyses and algorithms. They revealed the news about acquiring electronic crypto trading fund Hashtag Capital in a blog post that was published on June 2. The company said that this was primarily for its proprietary “true price” algorithm involving liquidity.

The release also stated that the purchase was part of the company’s recent push towards providing a higher degree of data accountability and transparency.

Brandon Chez, the CEO of CoinMarketCap, said that the acquisition would in the long run help in improving cryptocurrency pricing on the platform. Hashtag Capital’s algorithms, which as per the deal is included, will eventually replace CoinMarketCap’s current pricing model that uses volume-weighted averages.

As was reported earlier, in May of this year, CoinMarketCap had announced a transparency initiative, shortly after a major financial services firm claimed that 95 per cent of trading volume on major cryptocurrency exchanges is falsified.

The platform partnered up with numerous exchanges and formed an alliance called the Data Accountability & Transparency Alliance (DATA). The list of partners includes Binance, Bittrex, Oceana, Huobi, Bitfinex, Kucoin, and HitBTC Gate.io. The companies will reportedly convene for a roundtable event twice a year to discuss data transparency and accountability. As part of the agreement, partner exchanges must also provide CoinMarketCap with live trading and order book data.

With the “true price” algorithm, CoinMarketCap hopes to deliver more accurate prices by taking more data points into account and analysing how liquidity affects them. Along with existing algorithms, the price provider now also has access to Hashtag Capital’s key talent. A team at the hedge management firm developed the “true price” algorithm in a bid to improve fund performance.

CoinMarketCap also announced other changes within the executive level of the company in its release. Head of Marketing Carylyne Chan has been promoted to the position of Chief Strategy Officer, while Head of Business Development Emily Hurd will now serve as the company’s Chief Revenue Officer.