CoinMarketCap key executives step down amid Binance acquisition

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Five of CoinMarketCap’s top employees have reportedly left the company. Interim CEO Carylyne Chan, VP of operations, growth and revenue Spencer Yang, VP of products Jeremy Seow, global head of design and growth Matthew Lippl, and project lead and head of events Jared Chin are expected to be replaced by Binance selected staff.

Trouble on the horizon

CoinMarketCap’s executives are leaving because they felt it was time they apply their skills to other industries that need innovation or to launch businesses of their own. Unfortunately, this could spell trouble for the digital currency platform. 

Four months ago, Binance acquired CoinMarketCap for an estimated $400 million. Although the former executives say they were dedicated to independently running the company, there were instances when CoinMarketCap was accused of manipulating the platform’s rankings and statistics to favor their owner, Binance.

Rigging the system

In late July, as the DeFi sector began to take off, CoinMarketCap added a “Top DeFi Tokens by Market Capitalization” section on their website. However, Binance Coin (BNB) was listed as the #1 DeFi token by market cap—BNB is not a DeFi token. 

The Binance team quickly made an announcement apologizing and saying the mistake was due to human error.

Before that incident, Binance updated its market pairs ranking system in a way that made Binance the top digital currency exchange for nearly every trading pair listed on CoinMarketCap.

These incidents took place while the CoinMarketCap executives who just resigned were leading the company; and now that they have left, and will be replaced by Binance selected staff, the statistical manipulation and the rigging of the system in Binance’s favor will probably get worse.

Binance repeatedly tells the press that CoinMarketCap operates independently, but evidence shows that Binance may have a little more influence on what appears in CMC than they want us to think that they do.