The LSE Directory / Data providers
CoinMarketCap is a cryptocurrency market data aggregator that tracks prices, trading volumes, market capitalization and exchange rankings for tokens and coins across hundreds of trading venues. Retail users reach this data free through its website, mobile apps and browser tools; developers and businesses pay for it through the CoinMarketCap Pro API, a tiered REST service that returns live quotes, historical OHLCV data, exchange-level statistics, decentralized-exchange (DEX) data and global market metrics. Its own about page states it tracks over 53 million cryptocurrencies across more than 955 exchanges, with public API access dating to May 2016 and a dedicated professional API tier added in August 2018. The company differentiates on data-quality tooling rather than raw listing count. It introduced a Liquidity metric in 2019 specifically to discount exchanges reporting inflated trading volume, and its 2019 acquisition of Hashtag Capital brought in the True Price Algorithm used to filter wash-traded pairs. DexScan extends coverage to on-chain decentralized-exchange activity across more than 70 blockchain networks, an area competitors have historically covered less thoroughly than centralized-exchange data. Alongside the raw data feed it publishes derived indicators such as a Fear and Greed Index, an Altcoin Season Index and proof-of-reserves tracking, and runs CMC Academy, an educational content arm; its Pro API features page lists Coinbase, Google, Microsoft, Binance, Samsung and Yahoo among the organizations that have used its data. CoinMarketCap was founded in May 2013 in New York City by Brandon Chez, a computer science graduate of the Rochester Institute of Technology, to give retail users an unbiased read on token prices during the market's early, fragmented-exchange era. Binance, the cryptocurrency exchange, acquired the company in April 2020 for an undisclosed sum that Forbes reported could be worth around $400 million; it has continued to operate as a separate entity under Binance's ownership. In January 2018 the platform's decision to exclude South Korean exchanges from its price calculations, after users flagged a persistent local price premium, visibly cut several tokens' displayed market capitalization overnight (XRP was hit hardest), an episode still cited as an example of how much influence a single data aggregator can have over headline crypto prices. As of 2026 the Pro API is sold across six tiers, from a free Basic plan (15,000 monthly call credits, 30-plus endpoints) through Hobbyist, Startup, Standard and Professional to a custom-priced Enterprise tier; paid tiers add commercial-use rights, deeper historical data and higher rate limits. CoinMarketCap's own academy content frames this tiered-subscription structure as now standard practice across crypto market-data APIs, positioning the company as infrastructure for both centralized and decentralized market data rather than solely a price-lookup website.
