Congrats to the CMC team, but I fail to see how barring some special IP this makes sense at that valuation; they're an index that, while useful to an exchange, can't really be worth $400 Million in a current (albeit resilient) crypto Bear Market.
Binanace must be wanting to get rid of some Yuan as the CCP is just dumping Billions of it into the Market via bailouts, while people in Wuhan are supposedly coming [1] back online and wanting to 'Revenge shop.'
As for the idea of monopolizing such information, sites like Coingecko have been around for nearly as long as CMC, so it makes no sense. The other notable purchases Binance as made have been other exchanges, and a news site in China, which make actual sense to strengthen their position or get a foot-hold in other Markets in their core business as an exchange.
400 Million?! Maybe I'm missing something, but last time I checked, CoinMarketCap was just a stock ticker website for cryptocurrencies. Where is the value...?
You're underestimating the influence CMC has over the space.
They determine what exchange volume is legit and what isn't, also what coins are worthy of being listed. At the least, this gives Binance additional stability, at the most, they can really consolidate trading volume at their exchange and for Binance approved coins.
The coinmarketcap volume is not legit at all. They created the adjusted volume metric but it's still plain wrong. They currently show a 24h volume of $112Bn and a total market cap of $182Bn - that's just ridiculous.
That makes more sense, if the assumption is that institutional level investment is primed to get in and CMC's SIMETRI rating system is the seen as the most trusted way in.
Which I have serious doubts given how so many Banks and Hedge Funds already have established systems in place. Fidelity being the most notable in the US for example, but are much larger outside of the US.
> I'm one of the paying client for the API, people in the comments fail to understand that CMC API has many paying customers
Ok, I'll bite as I think I have somewhat of an idea what their underlying value is from this service, even though I admit I don't trade; do you honestly believe that without that rating system offered to the Institutional Investment crowd I mentioned earlier they'd be at even a fraction of their valuation/purchase price?
I ask because gaining a paying client list, which is probably a rounding error in comparison to Binance's current accrued trading fees, cannot really be the main selling point for this deal. Especially when investing in various cryptocurrencies itself is likely to have a higher risk-reward ratio than this API being the best thing since Bitcoin's Layer 2.
It's at best a (minor) value added service, in comparison to the potential of targeting and capturing the (predicted?) incoming waves capital flight risk, now that all this hot money is entering the Economy from China, US, EU, Australia, UK etc...
>do you honestly believe that without that rating system offered to the Institutional Investment crowd I mentioned earlier they'd be at even a fraction of their valuation/purchase price?
Standard license is $299/ mo, even with only 3000 paying customers, and there are likely way more than 3000 paying customers, that would be $10M a year in revenue
CMC is a good asset and a valuation/purchase price of $400M is a fair price for the API product only, let alone the ranking /rating aspect
I've also used their paid API and the overall sale is not too much of a shock to me considering how CMC have established their position as the most popular platform for market data.
$400 million for a consumer-facing analytics company with some SaaS data streams. HN can hate on crypto all it wants, but that's a real startup success! Great work CMC
Perhaps this isn't $400M in cash, but instead is $400M in binance-coins, which are virtually worthless, but make crypto startups appear much more valuable.
Which would effectively give them close to 1/4 of the entire token supply, which they could dump at any time and disrupt Binances financials? That's worse than giving them cheaply printed fiat from all of these bailouts/stimulus.
Agreed. The bailout money will go straight into crypto.
I predict that people are going to start taking out bank loans at 0% interest to buy crypto. Crypto assets have a very unusual attribute that they cannot always be recovered in case of bankrupcy because only the owner knows the private key to their wallet and they can claim to have 'lost their keys'. Cryptocurrencies therefore offer a decentralized mechanism to allow people to convert their ever inflating debt-money (which is not even their own money) into money that is their own and in limited supply.
Is it unethical? Yes, but we all know what happens when everyone start doing the wrong thing; it becomes OK. That's how fiat money came about; it's also highly unethical (compared to gold-backed currency), but when all the banks started loaning money backed by gold which they didn't actually have, it became OK too.
Our financial system's incentives which reward reckless behavior are going to be its own demise.
I also predict some utter idiots will indeed take out low interest loans and stake them in the heavily manipulated, volatile casino that is the cryptocurrency market.
Then they will find themselves with a pile of debt and no way to pay it off, just as many have before when 'investing' in hokey schemes and outright scams.
> Then they will find themselves with a pile of debt and no way to pay it off, just as many have before when 'investing' in hokey schemes and outright scams.
Oh, you mean like the rest of the entire banking and financial markets that led to all of the bailouts in the first place? And enriched and further consolidated the power of the 'too big to fail' institutions that continue to be rewarded for their corruption.
I'm not going to engage with the same tired arguments we had last time, and I don't doubt the scenario above happening either now that the Federal Reserve essentially got Carte Blanche to buy up so many loans should they go bad from the Banks, but given the current situation you have to at least see the BLATANT irony in your statement.
The SEC shuts down the mainly algo-trained, bot-trading driven stock market because they're taking on too many loses and you're decrying Crypto as the hotbed of malfeasance and manipulation?
If you can't see regulatory capture when it stares at you in the face this way, maybe you should really be looking at another more pertinent axe to grind.
I don't care much about cryptocurrencies, but everything is always just one regulatory action away from becoming practically useless for non-criminals.
> Whataboutism does not strengthen your own position.
Granted, but what you may fail to see is that Cryptocurrency is reactionary to the blatant corruption that has been normalized, the very same beahviour that the poster decries is plaguing Cryptocurrenices without providing much of an argument.
When in reality, currencies like Bitcoin continue to follow the Network's protocol that it derives its value from and has not detracted from it, despite the continuous polemics and external threats and attacks.
Sucks in what way exactly?
Because this is always a point of contention for most of its detractors. They aggregate all Cryptocurrencies into a single group, which is absurd.
Telling me how easy it is to lose a private key, thus your ability to move your funds, may be a valid point to your argument as functional (read: entirely fool-proof) key storage is still why I think its not ready for global mainstream use, in my opinion; but telling me about how a celebrity influencer Marketed alt/ICO didn't 1000x overnight as projected and instead crashed and burned as the creators absconded with the money that you read a blurb on techcrunch's twitter account is not.
Because from where I'm standing: I continue to have access to a low cost, friction-less token on an immutable ledger operating on the World's most secure Network on my phone, that I can use anywhere with wifi, and I can pay anyone who currently accepts Bitcoin and it operates 24/7 without anyone's permission.
And I can program it to do various things on top of that should I need it to, with built in trustless systems; and is also one that I can use to divide my unit of currency to 8 decimal points and still be able to operate on said network(s).
All of which incentivizes not only fair commerce and a real usecase for triple bottom line accounting, as it spurs on renewable energy as its main source as it continues to grow but also allows for previously marginalized/undocumented people into an economic system to be on boarded; unlike the exclusionary, war and fossil fueled driven fiat based system that is used to props up the Institutions I think we all know have outlived their purpose.
You can't really use them as currencies. They're too unstable. Cryptocurrency transactions are taxable events in the US. That alone is too much of hassle to make them worthwhile.
They're usually backed by nothing, which makes them a purely speculative risk asset. The most stable coins are backed, ironically, by fiat. Sometimes with fractional reserve. I've looked into crypto backed by precious metals, but liquidity is awful.
So they're useless as currencies, they're useless as a hedge, the only use for cryptocurrency is to speculate on cryptocurrency.
> Because from where I'm standing: I continue to have access to a low cost, friction-less token on an immutable ledger operating on the World's most secure Network on my phone, that I can use anywhere with wifi, and I can pay anyone who currently accepts Bitcoin and it operates 24/7 without anyone's permission.
Yes, that's the gimmick. I get it.
> And I can program it to do various things on top of that should I need it to, with built in trustless systems
All your "trustless" system can do is shift around entries on digital ledgers. That's not that useful. Most systems require some degree of real world trust and accountability.
For example, how does cryptocurrency deal with fraud and theft? Quite poorly, if you ask me.
> All of which incentivizes not only fair commerce and a real usecase for triple bottom line accounting, as it spurs on renewable energy as its main source as it continues to grow but also allows for previously marginalized/undocumented people into an economic system to be on boarded
I don't see any evidence that it actually does that. Sounds more like wishful thinking.
Maybe to you, just like the INR is useless to you as a currency (because you don't live in India). Many people do use Bitcoin as currency, and transact with it every day.
> Maybe to you, just like the INR is useless to you as a currency (because you don't live in India).
Apples and Oranges.
> Many people do use Bitcoin as currency, and transact with it every day.
Do they really? To buy what? Other cryptocurrencies?
Virtually nobody accepts Bitcoin as a currency. Some shops accept Bitcoin as the vehicle for transactions in USD or EUR, or whatever. They use services like Bitpay, who pay out in ordinary currencies. Prices are calculated based on the Bitcoin market price in ordinary currencies - plus a markup for volatility and transaction fees, which is generally more expensive than just using the ordinary currencies themselves.
That's not Bitcoin being used like a currency, that's Bitcoin being used like a payment provider, like PayPal. Millions of people transact with PayPal every day, but PayPal is not a currency.
Of course, that one time some guy bought a Pizza or even a House with Bitcoin. That's Bitcoin being used "like a currency". Exceptions to the rule.
> Virtually nobody accepts Bitcoin as a currency. Some shops accept Bitcoin as the vehicle for transactions in USD or EUR, or whatever. They use services like Bitpay, who pay out in ordinary currencies. Prices are calculated based on the Bitcoin market price in ordinary currencies - plus a markup for volatility and transaction fees, which is generally more expensive than just using the ordinary currencies themselves.
I mean if you just want to ignore the fact that all over Europe, you can pay rent, buy groceries, and live your life solely by using bitcoin, then I guess there's no arguing with you. You live in your own little bubble.
> I mean if you just want to ignore the fact that all over Europe, you can pay rent, buy groceries, and live your life solely by using bitcoin, then I guess there's no arguing with you.
That's a massive exaggeration. I can guarantee you 99.99% of landlords will not accept Bitcoin as payment. Most major stores will not accept Bitcoin.
Are there a couple of hipster places in major cities that may accept Bitcoin? Sure, presumably you can waste your money exclusively dining and shopping there, if that's your thing.
Pretty much nobody is going to do that in their daily life though, except to write one of these "I lived only on Bitcoin for a month" blog posts. That's because Bitcoin sucks as a currency. Right now, a single transaction to go through in about ten minutes will cost almost a dollar. It's just not practical.
Of course you can also get one of these Bitcoin credit cards and pay almost everywhere in the whole world. Again, that's not Bitcoin used a currency, that's Bitcoin used as a gimmick payment platform.
Look into Bitpay and others. Square has it built in too. It's rare but it's around. Look for the sticker next to Visa, MasterCard. Ever head of Diners Club? Ever heard of buying a sandwich with stock shares? Me either.
The 'fiat' system of floated currencies is able to adapt and change to changing economic circumstances, and be managed to keep the economy ticking over, preventing either the under or over abundance of currency by managing the supply.
In contrast cryptocurrency is fixed, static and inflexible, hampers new entrants to the economy in favour of those with established wealth, and would likely lead to the same stunted, constrained economic circumstances we can see from history, worsen crashes, and generally create the same conditions that lead to abandonment of systems like the gold standard in the past.
You always use that red herring tactic, rather than make a cogent argument--mainly because I don't think you have an actual argument but rather sensationalist knee-jerk reactions masquerading as one--but look below: I actually outlined how and why I think it is a system can actually combat the very pitfalls I listed with current features.
Will corrupt actors use this technology to steal/scheme, sure, of course that much is inevitable of any technology; but condemning the entire protocol and aggregating them altogether as a collective failure because of that is about as useful as saying the Internet should be seen as nothing more than a den of thieves, child pornographers and counter-fitters: when we clearly know it is much more than that.
They are a collective failure, particularly the places in which they are traded which is what we are talking about here.
You are the one throwing around red herrings and handwaving frantically about corruption elsewhere.
Talking about the value derived from the bitcoin protocol in this situation is absurd - the protocol itself is largely irrelevant, the corruption and manipulation are at the exchanges. The 'value' of your tokens derives more from their manipulation and hype than anywhere else, which is trivial to show because cryptocurrencies are not used anywhere else (besides the dark markets I guess, and even they have moved towards privacycoins).
Your bleating about renewable energy and trustlessness is also bullshit. The claims to use of renewable energy are based on conjecture amd estimation, not measurement. As a counterpoint there is a fossil fuel plant in upstate new york that has recently been kitted out for mining.
Secondly there is no such thing as 'trustless' with cryptocurrency - you must place all trust in people you are transacting with, rather than using a trusted intermediary. I trust established banks far more than J Random Retailer on the web.
Neither is there any compelling case that cryptocurrency has any effect on "banking the unbanked". "The unbanked" have no way to get into the system in the first place, nor the tech stacks to use it.
Your entire post, your entire worldview on this is wishful thinking and practically a set of coiner memes with no basis in reality.
> They are a collective failure, particularly the places in which they are traded which is what we are talking about here.
Funny, I'll just point to the BTC-e vs MT Gox example as what to expect when the State gets involved and steals the funds of an exchange outside its jurisdiction and what that outcome was, and the outcome of one that is incorporated and left to in the hands of a bunch bureaucrats to solve under a rehabilitation process.
You do the legwork and see what and how these 'failures' are caused.
> Talking about the value derived from the bitcoin protocol in this situation is absurd - the protocol itself is largely irrelevant, the corruption and manipulation are at the exchanges. The 'value' of your tokens derives more from their manipulation and hype than anywhere else, which is trivial to show because cryptocurrencies are not used anywhere else (besides the dark markets I guess, and even they have moved towards privacycoins).
Why, because you say it is? The truth is that: one bitcoin is still one bitcoin, and carries all of the functionality and security of the protocol, be it at $2 or $20k exchange price. This is critical in understanding what you're dealing with, and your refusal to accept that only exposes the weakness in your arguments even further. But lets continue...
They're not used in anything else? Do you realize Square got 1/2 of its profits from the buy/sale of Bitcoin, equal to that of its fiat Cash App feature(s), which is quite a popular fintech app and a common way to send money via mobile:
> Your bleating about renewable energy and trustlessness is also bullshit. The claims to use of renewable energy are based on conjecture amd estimation, not measurement. As a counterpoint there is a fossil fuel plant in upstate new york that has recently been kitted out for mining.
Then explain just these projects and what direction Bitcoin has taken for nearly 7 years before that:
I can go on, but, it just goes to show just how shallow your understanding of the topic you're attempting to rebuttal is. No one said it was 100% on renewable, so a single example of a fossil based doesn't diminish those findings, and that its 70%+ and growing, as it seeks to source the lowest energy cost for the greatest return on on investment: which as it turns out is renewable energy, be it solar, wind, or thermal as is the case in Iceland.
> Secondly there is no such thing as 'trustless' with cryptocurrency - you must place all trust in people you are transacting with, rather than using a trusted intermediary. I trust established banks far more than J Random Retailer on the web.
Really? I guess you're saying I can't create 2-3 multisig address to transact, because this was one of the earliest BIPs and is documented here:
And I can have that wallet operate on my own that I run from my own node, without the need to use 3rd party services.
> Neither is there any compelling case that cryptocurrency has any effect on "banking the unbanked". "The unbanked" have no way to get into the system in the first place, nor the tech stacks to use it.
> Your entire post, your entire worldview on this is wishful thinking and practically a set of coiner memes with no basis in reality.
Really? Ever heard of Bitpesa, a Bitcoin based alternative to M-pesa which has DEEP penetration in Africa and relies on equally low tech solutions to operate:
I just hope now you can take the time to look deeper than skimming some headline about how crypto is a failure and repeat it as fact when you can't seem to be able differentiate utility from certain examples of hype cycle alt-coin exit scams and paint both with a very broad brush strokes to suit your narrative.
Again all of this is sensationalist, reactionary conjecture from someone who see's no personal utility from crypto, and so assumes it must hold true for others.
Yes, I've heard of bitpesa, it's not even an m-pesa alternative or competitor (as declared by its founder), it's an international remittance product and cryptocurrency exchange, AFAICT and one thing we know is that, despite crowing from folks such as yourselves, international remittance has failed to embrace cryptocurrency in any significant volume because (as in basically every other arena) cryptocurrency doesn't actually address any problems people actually have, and introduces a whole load more.
Sure you can create multisig addresses, introducing more points of trust. And if you're reintroducing more points of trust, the whole thing becomes... well, pointless, we already have those systems, they work well and are regulated well. Like I said, "trustlessness" is a lie, you're just moving trust around the system in various ways.
But think about it. What does bankrupcy actually mean if all of the bankrupt person's assets are in crypto and only they know the private key? The bank/creditors cannot recover these assets.
So by that definition, is the person actually bankrupt if they still control all of these crypto assets?
One could argue that crypto makes reckless individuals bankruptcy-proof.
> What does bankrupcy actually mean if all of the bankrupt person's assets are in crypto and only they know the private key? The bank cannot recover these assets.
There are two cases: either the person declares these assets, or the person tries to hide these assets. If these assets are declared, they must be sold to pay as much as possible of the debts, or the debts won't be forgiven. If the person tries to hide these assets, the consequences are much worse; a quick web search tells me the debts won't be forgiven (or the forgiveness will be revoked after the fact), these debts cannot be forgiven later on another bankruptcy, and the person can even be arrested and/or pay a heavy fine (source: https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/bankruptcy/hiding-as...).
They can probably leave their home country and go to some country like Russia or China (or they could probably do the reverse and come to the US if their creditors are in China) and take their crypto with them. Even in the absolute worst case, some countries won't extradite to others.
Even the UK willingly accepts money from rich Russians. A lot of properties in London were bought with dirty Russian money; Russia can't get it back.
Yes, transplanting your entire life somewhere else is definitely better than obeying the law and participating honestly in bankrupcy proceedings, which are there to provide help to people unable to service their debts by providing a reset mechanism.
It's like you think bankrupcy is worse than the alternative - your debts following you everywhere, forever, even when you're utterly insolvent.
I think you may be right. What we would get after with cryptocurrencies might be some kind of unregulated anarcho-capitalism.
According to Marx, the absence of regulations should clear the path for capitalism's self-destruction. So I don't know if this would mark the end of Marxism or be a catalyst for its revival. But it probably won't be a smooth transition.
But who knows, maybe anarcho-capitalism will work if the communities are small enough.
Holy moly $400m for website that aggregates crypto coins data. Congrats to Coinmarketcap. I remember first using it in 2013, it was just another crypto website but it became the most popular soon after.
Binanace must be wanting to get rid of some Yuan as the CCP is just dumping Billions of it into the Market via bailouts, while people in Wuhan are supposedly coming [1] back online and wanting to 'Revenge shop.'
As for the idea of monopolizing such information, sites like Coingecko have been around for nearly as long as CMC, so it makes no sense. The other notable purchases Binance as made have been other exchanges, and a news site in China, which make actual sense to strengthen their position or get a foot-hold in other Markets in their core business as an exchange.
1: https://oklahoman.com/article/5659041/time-to-revenge-shop-c...