Is Coinmarketcap pulling a fast one?

Been lurking on this forum for a bit but had to chime in after today’s news. So, Coinmarketcap decided to remove Korean exchanges from their stats without giving any heads up on the site. This freaked a lot of folks out and caused a big sell-off of bitcoins and altcoins, leading to a major dip. It really makes me wonder what they were thinking. I feel kinda naive for thinking it was just an honest mistake. If they really cared, they could've put a notice on their site to prevent this chaos, but they chose not to. They had to know the fallout from that move would be huge and it feels like they played us. Sure, prices will likely recover soon and we’ll all be back to counting our profits, but it’s concerning how easily a site can sway the market like this. It’s not the first time we’ve seen something like this happen. Just a little news can send people into a panic. This shows how uncertain folks are about the market’s future, which leads to those panic sales. We need to talk about why we’re so quick to freak out like this. What do you all think about Coinmarketcap? Why do people react this way? It’s been on my mind. If you also believe Coinmarketcap scammed us, what do you think we should do instead? Edit: I might not have been clear on why I used the word 'SCAM'. Scams happen when someone deceitful tries to take money or something valuable from others. One theory floating around is that CMC was pa...

You think Coinmarketcap.com caused this dip? Why do you think that?

Traders big enough to move the market this much aren't making their trades based on CMC; they're watching the prices on their own exchange. Mondays are typically bloody in crypto anyway - not too surprising.

It is easy to see the drop in their website which happened in a matter of a second. The drops are more gradual in exchanges. Also, people are talking about it everywhere: https://thenextweb.com/hardfork/2018/01/08/ripple-market-price-korean-exchange/ https://thebitcoin.pub/t/chaos-coinmarketcap-removing-korean-exchanges-in-coinprice/22179 https://twitter.com/JoelKatz/status/950242696848842752 https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/7ownsm/coinmarketcapcom_no_longer_counting_korean/

You're giving too much credit to that website, it's just metrics. Much bigger things are happening: https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/59w5eb/china-is-about-to-kill-nearly-all-bitcoin-mining-operations-in-the-world

We throw the word 'scam' around way to much, to the point the word has lost all meaning.  I don't believe CMC is a scam but I do think they operate incompetently sometimes.  I use their site all the time but agree that removing Korean exchange volume with no announcement or warning is just irresponsible.

Well, scam is not good to tell the condition right now. Incompentently is appropriate to tell them, and why people must believe and use CMC as their standard.

It isn't coinmarketcap that is doing this but rather some news came out in South Korea that is causing these dips today read for yourself. I think that is why we have such a big correction today, carry on as always nothing to see here. https://themerkle.com/coinmarketcap-excludes-south-korean-prices-total-market-cap-drops-by-50bn/

I understand your position, but we can admit that these accusations only happen in relation to Coinmarket, because it is the most visited site, any error is fatal, 92% of the investors of Bitcon and altcoins depend on that site, it's something to think about.

Coinmarketcap can't affect the market as you say. Korean exchanges usually have higher prices at their exchanges (some coins are traded with premium) than other exchanges - this could be a possible answer.

How do you know it's the most visited site and in what manner investors in bitcoin and altcoins 'depend' on it? Where did you get the 92% figure?

How could something be called scam if no money is involved.  Well I don't consider CMC to be wrong here. The basic problem is the demographic of Crypto Investors. Most of the crypto investors are just noobs and path followers. Hardly 5-6% do real TA, rest just rely on market signals and eventually lose. We have population of investors who are ready to buy any shitcoin just on one call of 'McAfee's Coin of the Week'! I mean seriously, how could people be so dumb. Rest CMC is private site, it keep doing amendments to provide accurate estimates. It removes outlier prices regularly. This may be the same case too. If you don't like, you can stop using it.

I checked the twitter account of coinmarketcap just now and there are also some people complaining about it, they said that coinmarketcap really did removed south korean exchanges that is why the price chart of all cryptocurrency goes down especially Ripple because most of its volume comes from south korea. Most people use CMC to check the price of all cryptocurrencies (even myself) so I can say that this may be the big reason why the market are now crashing. I don't know why CMC did that, it's so disappointing. I thought it was just a price correction but its more likely a manipulation. check out the comments on their twitter account here: https://twitter.com/CoinMarketCap/status/949694871299940352

Yes you are right, I think that the news about china make the people go on panic buying and not the CMC. I also see this news 2hours ago but I'm glad the price of the bitcoin and other alt's are already going back to it's original price.

This is really unfortunate. I know that this will definitely not continue like this. As a decentralized community, one sees this kind of thing from time to time. And being a new and developing industry, a lot of investors are still skeptical even after investing. So any little change in the market, whether influenced or not triggers panic.

Obviously money is involved, Imagine how much money you could have made if you were CMC's staff, or image a Wale pays shit tons of money to CMC to not notice people before removing the Korean exchanges. Poor people who panic sale lost lots of money and after the dip wales show up and collect the chip coins... They are tons of ways they could have made money in this. Don't forget, this is a 700 trillion  market. 10% or even 1% dip is huge and I am pretty sure so many less informed people have lost their money in this.

I edited the post so I have explained why I used word 'scam'. but either scam, fraud or any other thing, they were dishonest about the only job they have. I feel responsible to talk about it.

As it was already said coinmarketcap could not cause this dump by its single action. If  you talk about scaming then imho it is a bit dishonest to calculate the average price index with the exchanges that could not be publicly accessed, that make market less healthy. Thanks got they were not calculating the rates fron nigerian or venezuelan exchanges that sometimes can be even twice biger than the ones from the US and EU. CMC should have done it a long time ago.

You are right, news like that are in the nature of the market. But even of CMC cause 1% of a change here I like responsible and wanna talk about it so the new people know that CMC isn't the best source to check the prices.

Coinmarketcap doesnt scam people but giving misinformation to the people causes panic selling at the market,yeah they are morelikey a manipulator but the word scam doesnt even fit.