CoinMarketCap has acquired Coinglass, the derivatives data platform traders rely on to track open interest, funding rates, liquidations and options across major exchanges, adding a view of leveraged positioning to a price tracker used by 115 million people each month.
The companies announced the completed transaction on September 25 and did not disclose financial terms. Derivatives account for the majority of crypto trading volume, and the deal folds Coinglass’s deeper coverage into a platform that already publishes open interest, funding and liquidation data, widening the exchanges, instruments and metrics CoinMarketCap tracks in one place. The move also comes as open interest across the derivatives market stands at $392.47 billion, according to CoinMarketCap at the time of writing.
Coinglass Keeps Its Brand
Coinglass launched in 2019 and now spans 28 exchanges and more than 2,500 instruments, serving over 5 million monthly users and 10,000 API customers. It provides real-time and historical data on open interest, funding rates, liquidations, long and short ratios, options and ETF flows across major exchanges.cf
Rush, chief executive of CoinMarketCap, framed the deal as a distribution move rather than a rebuild.
“Coinglass built the most trusted view of positioning in crypto by doing one thing very well. Our job is to make that view available to many more people, not to change it. Coinglass stays Coinglass, and nothing changes for its users.”
David Salamon, chief product officer at CoinMarketCap, pointed to how leveraged activity moves prices. “Open interest, funding and liquidations are where the market’s risk is actually taken, and Coinglass made that visible to everyone,” he said.
Coinglass will keep operating under its own name, telling users its website, app, free tools, API and pricing stay unchanged, an assurance that echoes how CoinMarketCap has preserved familiar brands since Binance bought it in 2020. Established data houses are widening their reach the same way, with FactSet buying longtime partner BCC Group this month to expand real-time market data distribution across cloud and on-premises environments.
Investor Takeaway
CoinMarketCap is buying distribution rather than rebuilding a product, leaving Coinglass independent with its team, tools and pricing intact the same way it has absorbed brands since the Binance era.
Crypto’s Data Land Grab
The Coinglass purchase lands mid-wave in a broader consolidation of crypto data. Blockworks acquired rival Messari in June for more than $10 million, a sharp markdown from the roughly $300 million valuation Messari held in 2022, funding the deal through a Series A extension raised at a $192 million valuation to roll up a sector strained by a wider funding slowdown.
Kaiko bought Amberdata the same month in its fifth acquisition, absorbing derivatives analytics and the GVOL options platform to serve more than 260 institutional clients, then merged its benchmarks with S&P Dow Jones Indices into a suite covering more than 4,000 rates. Strategic backers have kept deploying capital through the reset, led by Coinbase Ventures’ crypto deal count across the first half of the year.
The buying also runs past pure data shops, with Kraken parent Payward acquiring Magic Labs’ wallet business in July as exchanges, benchmarks and data providers race to own more of the pipes underneath the market.
Investor Takeaway
The Coinglass deal is one entry in a fast-moving consolidation, as exchanges, benchmark providers and data firms buy rivals and infrastructure at reset valuations to control more of crypto’s information layer.
