On May 1, the cryptocurrency market tracking platform CoinMarketCap celebrated its fifth anniversary.
“Since CoinMarketCap launched in 2013, the cryptocurrency space has grown tremendously as cryptocurrencies have cultivated mainstream interest. In this time, CoinMarketCap has also grown significantly,” the team wrote on their blog.
The folks behind the website recall that it initially launched tracking only seven cryptocurrencies and a couple of exchanges, reaching a total market capitalization of $1.6 billion. Today, the situation is much more interesting, as the website keeps tabs on 1600 of the top cryptos, and lists 200 exchanges. The platform gained worldwide attention at the beginning of this year as the market capitalization of the assets it tracked slowly marched toward $1 trillion.
From a high of $835 billion, the market cap of all the assets this website was tracking fell to dangerously close to the $200 billion mark during a massive price correction due to rumors of a ban in South Korea. Data from CoinMarketCap reflected the industry’s rebound. March and April were promising for the market, as its total cap recovered to what today is around $420 billion.
The website is a long-celebrated information tool for both newbies and veterans. However, the platform has not existed without controversy.
Just before the South Korean government’s talks in January, CoinMarketCap changed how it calculates the price of cryptocurrencies without warning by excluding a number of Korean exchanges.
They reasoned that a massive “divergence in prices” between Korea and the rest of the world ultimately led them to remove the items. CoinMarketCap said that it was attempting to “provide users with averages that are most relevant to them.”
Bitcoin in South Korea at the time fetched a far steeper price than exchanges in other parts of the world. This was most likely due to a lack of liquidity caused by foreign exchange restrictions.
Eventually, the drama subsided, and CoinMarketCap continued as one of the most visited sites by cryptocurrency traders the world over, and ranking 174th in Alexa.
This article appeared first on Cryptovest
