Binance to acquire CoinMarketCap for $400M

[Melting_Harps]

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.

1: https://oklahoman.com/article/5659041/time-to-revenge-shop-c...

[twox2]

I think it's because they have a massive audience, and along with that comes influence and marketing/advertising opportunity.

[Avalaxy]

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...?

[gentaro]

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.

[tbronchain]

I have a theory: they [finance] have (more than) enough cash, and they don't want another exchange to acquire them [cmc] and have so much visibility.

It reminds me of ctrip buying Skyscanner, maybe soon a "buy with binance" button for each crypto? More visibility for their platform and BNB?

[timcc50]

Huge amount of web traffic from crypto traders. I'd imagine they will direct those people to their exchange and make the money back in trading fees.

[csomar]

To the suspicious, CMC is more than a crypto prices list: https://coinmarketcap.com/api/pricing/

They also have several openings: https://jobs.coinmarketcap.com/employers/293118-coinmarketca...

[maxencecornet]

I'm one of the paying client for the API, people in the comments fail to understand that CMC API has many paying customers

[Jack_Knowles]

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.

[seibelj]

$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

[londons_explore]

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.

[Melting_Harps]

You mean this:

https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/binance-coin/

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.

[mrkramer]

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.

[pretfood]

Bye bye impartiality

[ianhawes]

Nomics[0] is a viable alternative for those that are now suspect of CMC.

[0] https://nomics.com

[dylkil]

prices are incorrect for me, says eth price is 101eur when its actually 120eur

[laCorona]

Well I guess it's time to find a different website to check Bitcoin prices.

[blatchcorn]

Waste of money