CoinMarketCap now controls the spot, on-chain and derivatives layers of crypto market data. The CoinGlass deal completes a consolidation that began with Hashtag Capital and DexScan. All three
CoinMarketCap completed its acquisition of CoinGlass on September 25, 2026, for an undisclosed price. The purchase gives the Binance-owned aggregator control of the three main layers of crypto market data. CoinMarketCap already ranks spot prices across more than 941 exchanges and, through DexScan, tracks over 52 million on-chain assets. CoinGlass adds open interest, funding rates, liquidations and options data from 28 derivatives venues. Beyond the deal itself, one company now aggregates most of the numbers retail traders, newsrooms and a large share of API clients use to describe the crypto market, and its parent company operates the largest exchange those numbers measure.
Crypto market data has developed in layers, and each one answers a different question. CoinMarketCap has now acquired or built all three.
CoinMarketCap data stack Three layers, one owner 3 Derivatives and positioning Acquired with CoinGlass Where is leverage and where would liquidations hit? 2026 2 On-chain and DEX markets Built in-house as DexScan What trades outside centralized exchanges? 2022 1 Spot prices and exchanges Core product, refined via Hashtag Capital What is the asset worth, and which volumes are real? 2013 / 2019The combined data is large by any standard. CoinMarketCap reports about 115 million monthly users, more than 50 million tracked tokens, 16 years of history and roughly 1 billion API calls a month. CoinGlass brings over 5 million monthly users, more than 10,000 API customers and 2,500+ derivatives instruments. The user bases overlap, so the totals cannot be added together. One group now controls both retail distribution and a B2B data pipeline covering all three layers.
The pattern goes back seven years. In June 2019 CoinMarketCap bought Hashtag Capital, its first publicly documented acquisition, at a time when it faced criticism for listing exchanges with inflated volumes. Hashtag’s team and pricing algorithms helped move CMC beyond simple volume-weighted averages. CMC’s current methodology still filters out outlier markets and venues with disabled withdrawals, the same data-quality problem Hashtag was brought in to address.
Binance bought CoinMarketCap in April 2020. It never disclosed the terms. The Block reported, citing sources, a value of up to $400 million, paid mostly in equity and BNB. Over the following years CMC expanded mainly with products it built itself, including portfolio tools, a community platform, exchange proof-of-reserves pages and, in August 2022, DexScan.
Derivatives were the exception. CoinMarketCap chose to buy that layer rather than build it, which makes CoinGlass only the second acquisition that can be verified from its public record.
Displaying a spot price means pulling a quote from several exchanges. Derivatives analytics requires far more. A liquidation heatmap needs feeds from dozens of venues, normalization of contracts that use different sizes and margin currencies, leverage estimates and a real-time system running on top of years of history. Options add strikes, expiries, implied volatility and put/call positioning. CoinGlass has been building this since 2019, and its charts are now standard sources in coverage of liquidations and funding rates.
The market’s size explains why CMC was willing to pay. CoinGlass’s H1 2026 report puts Binance’s derivatives volume at $9.34 trillion, or 26.6% of the measured market. Total derivatives volume reached $35.08 trillion in the first half, down 15.7% from a year earlier, so CMC is buying into a market that is still enormous even in a slower year. CEO Rush said in the announcement that derivatives are “where most of the market’s risk is taken.” A platform that shows only price was missing the part of the market where most of the activity now happens.
Market data is consolidating at the same time as trading. CoinGlass’s figures show liquidity concentrated among a small number of venues and becoming more so over the year.
The top five exchanges handled 61.2% of H1 derivatives volume, and the top ten handled 81.2%. The top-ten cohort’s monthly share rose from 79.7% in January to 82.3% in June. Binance’s monthly share rose from 24.1% to 28.3% over the same period. In open interest, Binance led with $24.01 billion daily on average, followed by CME with $13.55 billion.
Fewer exchanges produce most of the trading, and fewer companies now measure it. The CME figure shows that this data increasingly overlaps with regulated, traditional market infrastructure.
When Binance bought CoinMarketCap, critics questioned whether an exchange should own a leading exchange-ranking service. Binance said CMC would remain independent and that it would have no influence over rankings.
The CoinGlass deal extends the scope of that question. The same corporate group now controls the platform that ranks Binance first in derivatives volume and open interest, and that places it at $150.21 billion, or 64.4%, of the roughly $233 billion in user assets across its 16-exchange proof-of-reserves sample. CoinGlass itself notes that the reserve figures depend on wallet coverage and methodology.
Nothing in the record shows that this data has been influenced. The issue is structural. Owning all three data layers makes methodological transparency more important, because the parent company is one of the main entities being measured. Both companies stressed continuity, and Rush’s statement that “Coinglass stays Coinglass” addresses that concern directly without resolving it.
CoinMarketCap’s strategy mirrors moves elsewhere in the industry. CoinDesk, owned by exchange operator Bullish, acquired CCData in October 2024 and rebranded it CoinDesk Data, combining media distribution with institutional benchmarks. Kaiko acquired Kesitys and Napoleon Index in 2022, then Vinter in November 2024, an index provider whose benchmarks supported ETPs with more than $10 billion in assets. In June 2026 it bought Amberdata, its fifth acquisition, adding derivatives analytics and the GVOL options platform weeks after taking over on-chain infrastructure firm Cometh. Earlier this month S&P Global led a strategic investment that extended Kaiko’s Series B to $110 million, with BNP Paribas, Nasdaq, RBC and Susquehanna among the participants.
Crypto data consolidation Key acquisitions and deals, 2019-2026 CoinMarketCap / Binance Competitors June 2019 CoinMarketCap buys Hashtag Capital Price-integrity algorithms to filter unreliable exchange volumes April 2020 Binance buys CoinMarketCap Reported value up to $400M, official terms undisclosed 2022 Kaiko buys Kesitys and Napoleon Index Quantitative analytics and index capabilities August 2022 CoinMarketCap launches DexScan Expansion into on-chain and DEX market data October 2024 CoinDesk buys CCData Media distribution combined with institutional benchmarks November 2024 Kaiko buys Vinter Regulated indices behind ETPs with $10B+ in assets June 2026 Kaiko buys Amberdata Derivatives and options analytics, its fifth acquisition September 2026 Kaiko extends Series B to $110M Strategic investment led by S&P Global, with Nasdaq and major banks September 25, 2026 CoinMarketCap buys CoinGlass Adds the derivatives and positioning layer, completing CMC’s spot, DEX and derivatives data stackThe three models differ in who owns the data. Two are tied to exchanges and one is backed by traditional finance. Crypto datasets now feed ETF valuations, derivative settlements, risk systems and exchange rankings, so ownership of the data carries weight well beyond public price pages.
For CoinGlass users, nothing changes for now. The site, app, free tools, API and pricing stay the same, though neither company has said how long that will last.
CoinMarketCap users will probably see positioning data appear gradually on asset pages, such as aggregate open interest, funding, liquidation totals or options metrics next to price and market cap. CMC has not confirmed which datasets will be added or when.
Enterprise buyers face a new offer: spot, DEX and derivatives data from one group through two established APIs. That puts pressure on single-layer vendors. Kaiko has already moved in the same direction by buying Amberdata’s derivatives and options analytics.
Several terms remain undisclosed, including the price, the form of payment, CoinGlass’s revenue and retention arrangements for its team. The more consequential question is whether CoinGlass’s derivatives volumes and reserve data will eventually feed into CoinMarketCap’s exchange rankings. If that happens, the ranking methodology will need to be independent from a parent company that ranks first in nearly every dataset the group now owns.
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