CoinMarketCap Pushes Exchanges to Transparency: Sign of Mature Market?

In May, crypto market data provider CoinMarketCap requested all exchanges in the global exchange market disclose accurate data in a move to improve transparency of the information displayed on the platform.

CoinMarketCap declared an ultimatum to all exchanges listed, clarifying that they would be delisted from the platform if they fail to provide accurate trading data, volume and other relevant information.

The 45-day grace period has now well passed, with 70% of crypto exchanges reported to have provided CoinMarketCap with information required to comply with the DATA initiative.

BitMEX, Binance, OKEx and Huobi have been ranking as the top four exchanges based on reported volume, with Binance, OKEx and Huobi also ranking as the top three exchanges on adjusted volume.

Currently, CoinMarketCap estimates the global crypto exchange volume to be over $100 billion, a figure that is still estimated to be substantially higher than verifiable volume in the market.

Even with the removal of 30% of the exchanges that failed to comply with CoinMarketCap - which the firm has not disclosed yet - it is entirely possible that exclusion of alternative cryptocurrency volume would result in the verifiable daily volume of the crypto market being less than $30 billion.

As CoinMarketCap continues to delist exchanges that failed to comply with the DATA initiative from the platform, the daily volume of the market on CoinMarketCap is expected to decline.

"Initial BTI Verified exchanges include 9 of the top cleanest exchanges in our rankings. These exchanges include Coinbase, Upbit, Bittrex, Poloniex, Liquid, Kraken, Gate, Bitso, and Lykke. The largest exchanges in the United States, Korea, Japan, and Mexico are all on our initial release and we will be announcing new additions each month. All initial BTI Verified exchanges are over 90% clean with a few that are 97-99% clean including Coinbase and Upbit. Kraken was the cleanest exchange we found with these current algorithms at over 99%.".

Minor exchanges will likely not survive, increasing transparency in the market.

To comply with such policies, exchanges will need to appoint in-house security experts, establish better internal management systems and cover legal costs, which would generally create an impractical environment for small exchanges with small profit margins to operate in.