On September 25, CoinMarketCap completed its acquisition of Coinglass, with the deal amount undisclosed.
First, let’s talk about the scale on both sides. Coinglass was founded in 2019. It covers more than 2,500 products across 28 exchanges, has over 5 million monthly active users, and has more than 10,000 paid API customers. In the industry, it’s one of the most commonly used tools for open interest, funding rates, and liquidation heatmaps.
CoinMarketCap has roughly 115 million monthly active users. After being acquired by Binance in April 2020, it has continued to operate independently.
For ordinary users, the actual day-to-day change is almost zero—and that’s a good thing: Coinglass will remain independently operated. Its brand, team, website, app, free tools, API, and pricing policies will all stay the same. The purpose of the acquisition is to fill in the missing piece of derivatives data. Going forward, when you look at spot prices and trading volume on CoinMarketCap, you’ll also see changes in leveraged positions, liquidation concentration, and funding rates—without having to toggle between two separate sites.
I tend to believe that for retail traders, the most valuable thing is precisely “not having to fuss.” Coinglass’s free tier has long been the core of its customer acquisition. If, after the acquisition, the company starts putting up paywalls using free features and pushing users into its own ecosystem, then this acquisition’s net value to users would be negative.
A simple and verifiable test: over the next six months, check whether those features that used to be free have been moved behind paid tiers.
Another long-term point worth watching is data neutrality. Spot data and derivatives data come from the same company, and that company’s parent also runs one of the world’s largest trading platforms. Whether data definitions, exchange inclusion standards, and ranking algorithms might shift subtly matters far more than simply adding one more feature. The value of a tool comes from neutrality—not from having more features.
So I have a very specific question for you: if, one year after the acquisition, the Coinglass free version truly has zero changes in its functionality, would you switch the liquidation heatmap from the standalone site to CoinMarketCap? Or is the migration cost for a data tool basically not something you care about?
#CoinMarketCap completes the acquisition of Coinglass
First, let’s talk about the scale on both sides. Coinglass was founded in 2019. It covers more than 2,500 products across 28 exchanges, has over 5 million monthly active users, and has more than 10,000 paid API customers. In the industry, it’s one of the most commonly used tools for open interest, funding rates, and liquidation heatmaps.
CoinMarketCap has roughly 115 million monthly active users. After being acquired by Binance in April 2020, it has continued to operate independently.
For ordinary users, the actual day-to-day change is almost zero—and that’s a good thing: Coinglass will remain independently operated. Its brand, team, website, app, free tools, API, and pricing policies will all stay the same. The purpose of the acquisition is to fill in the missing piece of derivatives data. Going forward, when you look at spot prices and trading volume on CoinMarketCap, you’ll also see changes in leveraged positions, liquidation concentration, and funding rates—without having to toggle between two separate sites.
I tend to believe that for retail traders, the most valuable thing is precisely “not having to fuss.” Coinglass’s free tier has long been the core of its customer acquisition. If, after the acquisition, the company starts putting up paywalls using free features and pushing users into its own ecosystem, then this acquisition’s net value to users would be negative.
A simple and verifiable test: over the next six months, check whether those features that used to be free have been moved behind paid tiers.
Another long-term point worth watching is data neutrality. Spot data and derivatives data come from the same company, and that company’s parent also runs one of the world’s largest trading platforms. Whether data definitions, exchange inclusion standards, and ranking algorithms might shift subtly matters far more than simply adding one more feature. The value of a tool comes from neutrality—not from having more features.
So I have a very specific question for you: if, one year after the acquisition, the Coinglass free version truly has zero changes in its functionality, would you switch the liquidation heatmap from the standalone site to CoinMarketCap? Or is the migration cost for a data tool basically not something you care about?
#CoinMarketCap completes the acquisition of Coinglass