Has Top Cryptocurrency Website CoinMarketCap Completely Given Up On Data Accuracy? (forbes.com)
This year, two major research reports from cryptocurrency companies have concluded that between 65% and 95% of reported crypto trading volume is fake.

But if you browse the ranking of digital asset trading platforms on CoinMarketCap, the most popular data-aggregation site, it looks like the website’s owner never got the memo.

Of the top 25 of the 260 exchanges listed on the site, more than 75% have been suspected of reporting fake volume.
CoinMarketCap’s first response to these findings, after the Bitwise report about fake volume in March, were tweets acknowledging the concern.

The company has a 40-person team with six data scientists, and Forbes estimates it earns between $20 million and $30 million a year in ad revenue.

CoinMarketCap CEO Brandon Chez says fake trading volume “is an important issue, and we’re actively trying to solve it.”
But four months after Bitwise’s blockbuster report, and three weeks after Forbes reported on BKEX, an exchange that simply replicates another’s transactions seconds later, CoinMarketCap seems to have done very little to fix the problem.

In May, the company launched a Data Accountability and Transparency Alliance (DATA) partnership. Its stated goal is to promote transparency and accountability in crypto.

But the initiative seems unlikely to spur significant changes, as several exchanges that are suspected of fake volume, like CoinSuper and Bitrue, are members.

CoinMarketCap has added a column for “adjusted volume” on its rankings, but the numbers are almost entirely the same as “reported volume” provided by the exchanges themselves (see chart below).

And many that rank highly, such as CoinBene (No. 9) and LBank (No. 6), were found to be highly suspicious by Bitwise and Alameda Research.

“It’s like trying to put out a fire, a blazing house fire, by pouring a small cup of water on it,” says Nic Carter, a partner at crypto investment fund Castle Island Ventures, regarding CoinMarketCap’s efforts to clean up its data.