CoinGecko’s crawl to the crypto summit

Crypto trading has more than quadrupled since 2018 to reach nearly US$140 billion in daily trade value. Malaysia’s CoinGecko is locked in a David and Goliath battle to be the site record for crypto financial information

Pioneering data and analytics site CoinMarketCap grabbed mainstream attention but a US$400 million acquisition raised concern over its impartiality

Malaysia’s CoinGecko is a bootstrapped and profitable challenger with a lean staff of just 16

CoinGecko is on track to overtake CoinMarketCap on traffic, but its monetisation model is immature and the launch of a VC arm raises conflict

The future of both sites relies on crypto gaining mainstream appeal and the volatile prices stabilising

When the price of Bitcoin flirted with an all-time-high of US$20,000 throughout November 2020, millions were glued to pricing sites in anticipation. For many, their window into the meteoric movements of Bitcoin was crypto’s own price-watching champion CoinMarketCap LLP. Over its seven-year-long history, CoinMarketCap has become the go-to resource for checking and comparing the price of Bitcoin, other cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum, and even the exchanges where they are traded.

With its claims of 83 million monthly pageviews and 515,000 daily users, it is the proverbial 800-pound gorilla of crypto pricing sites. So much so that Binance Holdings Ltd bought bought CoinMarketCap Binance and CoinMarketCap Announce Acquisition to Collectively Make Cryptocurrency More Accessible for Everyone Read more US-based CoinMarketCap in April in an undisclosed deal.

AUTHOR

Jon Russell

Jon Russell is Southeast Asia editor for The Ken based in Bangkok. Originally from the UK, Jon moved to Thailand in 2008. He’s passionate about telling thoughtful business stories, and tracking the impact of the internet in his adopted home of Southeast Asia.

View Full Profile