- The crypto exchange Binance plans to acquire CoinMarketCap. The price for the acquisition is estimated at 400 million dollars.
- The deal is criticized for its potential to increase the centralization on the crypto market.
A recent report shows that the crypto exchange Binance is close to completing the acquisition of the data platform CoinMarketCap. The value of the acquisition is estimated at around 400 million dollars, making it one of the most expensive in the crypto sector. Although no further details of the deal or the terms of the acquisition are known, it is expected to be announced later this week. If successful, the deal would follow Binance’s acquisition of DappReview and WazirX.
CoinMarketCap is one of the most relevant data sources in the crypto market. The website is visited by almost 40 million users per month and has an 80% higher traffic rate than Binance. Despite its popularity, however, CoinMarketCap has also been the subject of criticism in the past. As a result, the platform introduced a new indicator in November 2019 to reduce the manipulation of metrics by exchanges (fake volumes) and to measure the liquidity of more than 300 cryptocurrencies more accurately.
Will the deal threaten the decentralization of the market?
The announcement immediately drew criticism from the crypto community. According to some members of the crypto community, the merger of one of the largest exchanges with one of the most relevant data platforms could be a combination that affects the whole market. According to Matrixport’s Sales Manager, Eugene Ng:
Who would ever trust CoinMarketCap after this, doesnt make sense. A stake from Binance might likely work better than an acquisition, just defeats the purpose of having a balanced and neutral index aggregator.
On the other hand, Citizen’s business development manager, Jeroen Hesp, joined Ng. He said that the purchase will not bring anything good to the crypto market. In addition, Hesp stated the following:
Coinmarketcap is an independent listings website. Binance could skew data and ads on the platform towards their own token and IEO’s.
Other users thought it was more convenient to wait and see how Binance deals with the acquisition of CoinMarketCap, although the consensus seems to be that the data platform will no longer be impartial when it comes to showing the performance of the main cryptocurrencies.
Follow us on Facebook and Twitter and don’t miss any hot news anymore! Do you like our price indexes?