The LSE Directory / Charting platforms
CoinGecko is an independent cryptocurrency market data aggregator, founded in Singapore in 2014, that tracks price, trading volume, market capitalization, liquidity, and community and developer activity across a large universe of digital assets and trading venues. Per its own API documentation as of mid-2026, the platform covers more than 18,000 coins, 1,500 centralized and decentralized exchanges and 600 categories for traditional market data, plus onchain data spanning 200-plus blockchain networks, 1,800-plus decentralized exchanges and tens of millions of tokens through its GeckoTerminal product. Data reaches retail users through a public website and mobile apps, and reaches developers and institutions through a REST, WebSocket and webhook API. CoinGecko's main differentiator is ownership independence: unlike its largest rival, CoinMarketCap, which Binance acquired for an estimated 400 million dollars in April 2020, CoinGecko has never been owned by an exchange, which it and outside commentators cite as lowering the risk of volume or ranking bias on the site. It backs this with a proprietary Trust Score, introduced in 2019 and recalculated weekly, that ranks exchanges primarily on liquidity, order-book depth and trading activity rather than self-reported volume alone. Its customer base spans retail investors and traders using the free web and app tools, plus exchanges, wallets and, increasingly, traditional financial institutions that license the market data API; the company's own figures put API traffic at over 677 billion requests in the year to August 2025. CoinGecko was founded on April 8, 2014, by TM Lee and Bobby Ong, who ran the company as a two-person team for its first four years before hiring additional staff from 2018 onward; day-to-day operations are rooted in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, even though the company is registered in Singapore. It is widely reported to have operated for most of its history without external venture capital funding. On August 19, 2025, the company restructured its leadership: co-founder Bobby Ong moved from chief operating officer to chief executive officer, co-founder TM Lee moved from chief executive officer to president focused on long-term product research, Cedric Chan, who had been Head of Engineering since 2021, became chief technology officer, and Xingyi Ho moved from Head of Growth to Head of Product. In January 2026, CoinDesk reported that CoinGecko had hired investment bank Moelis to explore a sale valued at roughly 500 million dollars, with the process said to have begun in late 2025. Trade press coverage floated potential buyer categories including major crypto exchanges, traditional exchange groups such as CME Group and Nasdaq, and financial data incumbents such as Bloomberg and Refinitiv. CEO Bobby Ong acknowledged the reports without confirming a transaction, saying the company is growing, profitable, and seeing increasing demand from institutions as traditional finance embraces crypto. The same report noted that CoinGecko's monthly website traffic had fallen to about 18.5 million in December 2025 from 43.5 million in 2024, attributing part of the decline to users turning to AI chatbots for market information instead of dedicated data platforms.
