The LSE Directory / Data providers
CoinGecko is a cryptocurrency market data aggregator and analytics platform, not an exchange or a trading venue. It collects price, market capitalisation, trading volume and supply data from centralised exchanges and publishes it through a free consumer website, mobile apps, and a public and paid API; its separate product GeckoTerminal extends the same tracking on chain, covering decentralised exchange trading across 200-plus blockchain networks and 1,800-plus DEXes. As of mid 2026 the core site lists more than 18,000 coins across 1,500-plus exchanges. The company positions itself as an independent, listings-neutral alternative to exchange-affiliated data sites, a distinction reinforced by its Trust Score, a methodology introduced in May 2019 and updated later that year, which ranks exchanges on liquidity, order book depth, web traffic and regulatory factors rather than self-reported volume, specifically to counter fake volume reporting. Its commercial center of gravity is the API: CoinGecko has said it served more than 677 billion API requests in the twelve months to August 2025, with wallets, exchanges and financial institutions among its integrators. Revenue comes from advertising, sponsored placements, affiliate links and paid API subscription tiers rather than trading fees, and the company has described itself as profitable while remaining privately held. CoinGecko was founded in April 2014 by TM Lee and Bobby Ong as a bootstrapped side project the two ran alongside their day jobs, started with a small amount of capital and deferring their first hire until 2018. It operates out of Malaysia, based in Petaling Jaya near Kuala Lumpur, and employs roughly 70 people across Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines; the founders have said they deliberately avoided venture capital to keep the company independent through multiple crypto bear markets. On 19 August 2025 the company announced a leadership change: co-founder Bobby Ong, previously chief operating officer for more than a decade, became CEO; co-founder TM Lee, the former CEO, moved to President to focus on longer-range product research; and Cedric Chan, who had joined as head of engineering in 2021, became CTO. In January 2026, CoinDesk reported that CoinGecko had hired the investment bank Moelis to explore a sale of the company at a valuation of roughly 500 million dollars, with the process said to have begun in late 2025. Bobby Ong publicly acknowledged the company was evaluating strategic opportunities without confirming a sale, stating CoinGecko was growing, profitable and seeing rising demand from institutional users. The reports coincided with a reported decline in the site's own traffic, which CoinDesk put at about 18.5 million monthly page views in December 2025 versus 43.5 million a year earlier, a drop several outlets linked to users turning to AI chatbots for crypto price lookups instead of visiting data sites directly.
