Key Highlights
- CoinMarketCap acquires CoinGlass to expand its crypto derivatives data coverage.
- CoinGlass will keep operating independently, with its brand, team, website, app, API and pricing unchanged.
- CoinMarketCap users will gain access to derivatives data, including open interest, funding rates, liquidations and options across 28 exchanges.
CoinMarketCap has acquired crypto derivatives data platform CoinGlass in a deal announced on September 25. The acquisition expands the market data available to CoinMarketCap’s 115 million monthly users.
According to the announcement, the deal adds information on leveraged trading, liquidations, funding rates and open interest to CoinMarketCap’s price data.
The financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. However, the firm said CoinGlass will keep its name and continue operating as an independent business. Its website, app, free tools, API and pricing will remain unchanged, while its existing team will also stay in place, according to the companies.
The acquisition connects CoinMarketCap’s price-tracking audience with Coinglass’s derivatives market data.
CoinMarketCap said users will now be able to see information about how traders are positioned in the derivatives market alongside the cryptocurrency prices they already follow.
This includes data that can show where large numbers of liquidations are building up and whether funding rates are rising or falling.
In simple terms, the information can give users a closer look at what is happening with traders using borrowed money or leveraged positions.
CoinGlass keeps its brand
CoinGlass was founded in 2019 and focuses on crypto derivatives data. According to the press release, it tracks open interest, funding rates, liquidations and options across 28 exchanges and more than 2,500 instruments. The platform reportedly has more than 5 million monthly users and 10,000 API customers.
One of its well-known tools is the liquidation heatmap. It helps users see areas where traders may be forced to close leveraged positions. CoinGlass also provides dashboards for open interest and tables showing funding rates across exchanges.
Why derivatives data matters
Derivatives are a major part of crypto trading, accounting for most of the market’s trading volume, according to CoinMarketCap’s announcement. Unlike simply buying or selling a cryptocurrency, derivatives allow traders to take positions based on the expected movement of an asset, often with leverage.
That makes data such as open interest, funding rates and liquidations useful for people watching the derivatives market. Open interest shows the amount of active derivatives contracts, while funding rates show payments between traders holding different sides of perpetual futures contracts.
CoinMarketCap explains the deal
CoinMarketCap CEO Rush said the company plans to keep CoinGlass focused on what it already does.
“Derivatives are where most of the market’s risk is taken, and Coinglass is where most people go to see it,” Rush said. He added that CoinMarketCap wants to make the data available to more people without changing the CoinGlass product.
David Salamon, CoinMarketCap’s chief product officer, also pointed to the role CoinGlass has played in making derivatives activity easier for traders to see. He said open interest, funding and liquidations show where risk is being taken in the market.
Binance acquisition adds background
CoinGlass confirmed that it will continue operating under its current brand. The company said its website, app, free tools, API and pricing will not change, while its team will continue building the products used by its customers.
The acquisition adds another layer to CoinMarketCap’s history. Binance acquired CoinMarketCap in April 2020. At the time, Binance said the price-tracking platform would continue operating independently and that the exchange would not influence its rankings.
With the CoinGlass deal now completed, CoinMarketCap is bringing two sides of crypto market information closer together: the prices users track and the derivatives activity happening behind those prices. The company will now offer its users a broader view of the market while CoinGlass continues operating under its existing name and structure.
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