Coinmarketcap Makes First Ever Acquisition, Bags Crypto Trading Firm

In a blog post published June 26, the company said that it had acquired electronic crypto trading fund Hashtag Capital, primarily for its proprietary “true price” algorithm involving liquidity. The release went on to state that the purchase was part of the company’s recent push towards providing a greater degree of data accountability and transparency.

Battling Fake Trading Volume

CEO of CoinMarketCap Brandon Chez said that the acquisition would go a long way towards improving cryptocurrency pricing on the platform. Hashtag Capital’s algorithms, included as part of the deal, will eventually replace CoinMarketCap’s current pricing model that uses volume-weighted averages. In May of this year, CoinMarketCap announced a transparency initiative, shortly after a major financial services firm claimed that 95 percent 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, OceanEx, 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.

Major Company Reshuffling

With the “true price” algorithm, CoinMarketCap hopes to deliver more accurate prices by taking more data points into account and analyzing 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. Do you use CoinMarketCap or a rival platform to keep track of digital currency prices? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.