The LSE Directory / Charting platforms
CoinMarketCap is a cryptocurrency price-tracking and market-data platform that aggregates prices, trading volumes, market capitalization, circulating supply and historical OHLCV data for cryptocurrencies and tokens across hundreds of exchanges. It publishes this data through a public website, mobile apps, and a tiered REST API (free and paid professional tiers) that developers and businesses use to pull market data programmatically. Beyond spot pricing, the platform runs DexScan, an on-chain screener for decentralized-exchange trading pairs, alongside NFT rankings, an educational "Academy" section, and exchange-ranking tools. The company positions itself as a reference layer for the crypto industry rather than a trading venue: it is cited by outlets such as Forbes, Bloomberg and CNBC for market data, and many exchanges and wallets treat a token's appearance on CoinMarketCap as a distribution milestone. In 2019 it introduced a Liquidity metric specifically to let users see through inflated or wash-traded exchange volume, a problem the company had already confronted in January 2018 when it removed South Korean exchange prices from its global index after users complained that the region's premium pricing was skewing worldwide averages; the change triggered a sharp market reaction in XRP and other tokens quoted against the removed venues. Its differentiation from other price trackers rests on breadth of coverage and API reliability rather than exclusive data partnerships. CoinMarketCap was founded in May 2013 by IT programmer Brandon Chez in New York City, who has described it as starting as a passion project to present altcoin market capitalization the way financial news sites presented equity market caps. By 2018 it had become, per the Wall Street Journal, one of the most popular websites in the world. In April 2020, Binance acquired the company; the deal closed on March 31, 2020 and was announced April 2, 2020, for an undisclosed sum that Forbes estimated at roughly four hundred million dollars, with Binance's CEO at the time citing CoinMarketCap's user base as the rationale. The company also established a "DATA Alliance" and acquired Hashtag Capital in 2019. By its own account it reaches hundreds of millions of users a year and recorded 13.2 billion page views in 2021. Under Binance ownership, CoinMarketCap has continued expanding its product set, adding a community platform in 2022, AI-generated coin and whitepaper summaries, and a meme-token explorer, and has stated it holds ISO 27001 and ISO 27701 information-security certifications as of mid-2026.
