CoinMarketCap (CMC) is a website that displays cryptocurrencies market cap rankings, charts, and more. The goal is to bring cryptocurrency to full light and make it effective by encouraging users to make their own intelligent choices with impartial, high-quality, and reliable information.
CoinMarketCap was founded in May 2013, and it has steadily developed into the most reliable platform for crypto enthusiasts, organizations and media outlets to evaluate thousands of crypto assets. Their database monitors the capitalization of different cryptocurrencies. Like the current volume of coins/tokens in circulation, the trade volume of the last 24hrs, list of each coin/token's price and market capitalization.
The website contains an event calendar, crypto glossary, historical snapshots, crypto glossary, currency converter calculator, API service, and watch list for users to customize. It also offers a separate ticker widget with cryptocurrency prices for other sites. CoinMarketCap aggregates cryptocurrency prices and calculates price averages shown to users.

What is Cryptocurrency?

Before we delve further into the analysis of CoinMarketCap, it would be interesting and necessary to educate newbies and interested oldbies on what cryptocurrency is.
Cryptocurrency is a digital or virtual currency safeguarded by cryptography that makes counterfeiting or double-spending almost impossible. One key feature of cryptocurrencies is that they are not imposed upon by a central authority, making them conceivably resistant to manipulation or interference by the government.
The CoinMarketCap websites display information on both coin and tokens. The difference between a coin and a token is that a coin has its blockchain, which means it can operate on its own while a token operates under the coin’s blockchain.

Features of CoinMarketCap

The cool features of CoinMarketCap include:
Market: CMC displays a list of cryptocurrency exchanges where you can make transactions. It doesn’t consist of every exchange available but only those linked to the website and updated periodically as the site pleases.
It is advised to only use exchanges listed on CMC as they have passed through security processes to be advertised on the platform. To get your exchange listed on CoinMarketCap, you have to follow the listing criteria which can be found HERE.
Charts: Chart featuring the average value of a coin/token is displayed for users on CoinMarketCap. The price of a coin displayed is calculated using data gotten from each coin’s site. It is important to note that these prices aren’t static since cryptocurrencies are volatile in nature.
Social: On CoinMarketCap, you will find a collection of current social network records which includes cryptocurrency research. To grasp the causes behind the market change and not resort to unnecessary guesses and risks, it is incredibly helpful for a cryptocurrency trader to check the platform at the time of a price increase or sudden decline.
Historical Data: This contains record quotes that are processed by time intervals. The details found here can be helpful when you desire to check the connection between different cryptocurrencies.
Tools: Here you will get a free widget of the website which shows the latest information of a token. It is found on the right side of the site.
Rankings: Listing and ranking of coins and exchanges on CoinMarketCap are of utmost importance and with the platform's worldwide popularity, every project would love to be listed and ranked high on it, which of course some key factors are considered before this could occur. These factors are explained in another section of this article.

Since 2018, many exchanges resorted to inflating their trading volume to rank high on CoinMarketCap until recently. Improving on their previous ranking system released earlier late last month, CoinMarketCap has released a ranking system that is legitimate and traders can confidently make the right choices.
Generally, achieving high volumes without a sufficient number of traders and a liquid market is impossible in a retail-driven cryptocurrency trading market.
CoinMarketCap aims to accomplish two key objectives, which are:

• Use a combination of Liquidity Score, Reported Volume, and Web Traffic Factor to rank market pairs of all crypto assets.
• Enhance the level of user's confidence by releasing an accurate Reported Volume of an exchange.

Ranking of market pairs would be performed taking into consideration the key variables of Web Traffic, Reported Volume, and Liquidity Score. The algorithm takes all of these variables as parameters into a machine learning model, and ranks market pairs automatically, depending on the complex weights attached to each of these variables. For each cryptocurrency, the top market pairs would be those with the maximum average Web Traffic, Reported Volume, and Liquidity Score, rather than strictly being measured on just Reported Volume.
This set of variables is intended to provide more details of each market pair, reasonably determined by an automated machine learning algorithm, helping users make better choices when it comes to handling their assets.
For exchanges, it is now almost impossible to report fake volumes as liquidity of all market pairs is reported using Liquidity Score and the number of traders on an exchange is estimated using Web Traffic Factor. The estimated volumes help spot anomalies where exchanges disclose higher volumes than predicted by the model that in turn assists CoinMarketCap to flag the perpetrators appropriately with their Confidence indicator.
The Confidence indicator is classified into three bands:
High: > 75%
Moderate: 50% - 75%
Low: < 50%

Mobile App of CoinMarketCap

On April 16th, 2019, CoinMarketCap launched its application for both Android and iOS devices. It was described as the most powerful app in the crypto space. It allows users to sort the name, price, or price percentage of a coin within 24 hours, through the coin market cap ranking, and you can search for different tokens.
Besides price tracking, users can also set up the app to alert them of price updates. Users will be notified when their price target has been reached, allowing them to make more effective and rational decisions about their investments in cryptocurrency. CMC indicated that the notifications may be configured for any cryptocurrencies of over 2000 cryptocurrencies on the platform.
The app also has a feature that allows users to convert particular crypto to another e.g crypto to fiat. Conversions may be done using the available price converter on CMC.

CoinMarketCap Chat

CoinMarketCap at some point decided to bring their community together by creating a chat function. Their chat is more unique than the normal messenger such as WhatsApp, Twitter, or even Telegram. Every CMC's top 100 coins have its channel. The most notable thing about this chat is that the channels are only open for conversation if there is a significant price change and it lasts for 24 hours.
For example, if Bitcoin experienced a significant rise in price, let's say past $11,000, the Bitcoin chat opens up for interested users to share ideas or technical analysis on the market and after the 24hour mark, the chat closes.
To be able to chat on the CoinMarketCap, you must first create an account with them. To create an account, look to the upper right-hand side of the page and click on the Sign up button as seen below.

CMC plans on improving its chat network beyond just CMC users. They plan to hold an "Ask Me Anything" program with some crypto intellects on their chat. This will provide coin founders and developers room to share their ideas with the CMC community.

Conclusion

CMC is referenced as the number one platform for tracking the prices of cryptocurrencies worldwide. Its mission of popularizing cryptocurrency and providing interested users with detailed information on what they did and why they need it is most appreciated in the crypto space.
CMC is not a regulatory body but they do invite and encourage the user community to submit a request for their team to investigate whatever issue they have. Users can provide any evidence they have supporting their perspective. As it stand, CoinMarketCap got an excellent score from me when it comes to their user experience as the platform has always wow my expectations. It won’t be a bad idea that everyone in the crypto space explore this platform the more to understand it better.