CoinMarketCap and Binance Said to Prepare $400M Deal, CZ Plans Half the Industry Buyout?

Crypto market experience slight shock after the news break that Binance wants to buy the most popular, and traffic-rich, CoinMarketCap (CMC) data parsing website. If the rumor is true, this will be a small, yet important landmark in the history of crypto trading as CMC, despite they have a bad reputation among crypto OG’s, had more than 200 million people in pure traffic in the last 6 months. Larry Cermak, The Block’s head of research, claims that the acquisition starts a conflict of interests, as well as raises awareness about CMC’s price data cheating in the past.

Just to compare, Binance got only 113 million visitors over the same period. This means, if the acquisition takes place, Binance could gain up to 80% in traffic. Sure, a part of the CMC visitors also visit and use Binance. We can expect at least 50-60% in traffic growth, considering a fresh wave of unexperienced potential crypto users.

Terms of Binance and CoinMarketCap Deal Still Unclear

The acquisition seems like a part of the broader plan by Binance since they bought nine big crypto companies during 2019. Those include WazirX, DappReview, JEX, TrustWallet and more. The TrustWallet joined the Binance ecosystem in July 2018. Since then, a cascade of further deals emerges. Per Binance CEO, Changpeng Zhao:

“As the saying goes, when you can’t beat them, buy them.”

He also notes that there is a huge number of deals in discussions among top managers:

“When we identify top talent with a top product that we can’t beat, and the teams share common values, a merger makes sense in most cases. There are always many deals in dicussion at any given time, and there are 2 that I am very excited about specifically. We will announce them in due time.”

Despite the Block’s announcement, the community is unclear whether the acquisition happens. The Block news piece claims that the outlet has its sources. Coinspeaker has reached out to both companies to confirm or dismiss the news.

Earlier this year Binance’s ‘CZ’ was talking about two major acquisitions planned for 2020. Per Changpeng, those secret ventures will make Binance cause significant impact on the industry. Zhao said he is ‘very excited’ about the incoming deals. CoinMarketCap was founded by Brandon Chez, an anonymous person living somewhere in the U.S. Binance, on its turn, is one of three key exchanges in the industry, per SimilarWeb stats.