CoinMarketCap’s CTO Exclusive: We Can Not Verify Bitwise’s Accuracy

CoinMarketCap CTO Mauvis Ledford said that though they respect Bitwise, their research did not state any formal methodology that can be used to independently rate an exchange by 3rd parties.

Block Live Asia was settled with the goal of removing existing barriers of entry into the space, and promote interest from the masses on blockchain technology and its real world usage.

With tackling industry pain-points, and reshaping mass perspectives on blockchain, attendees were able to experience authentic, constructive and necessary discussions about real work that is being done in the blockchain space.

Ngeow Jiawen, CEO of the blockchain company Grounded that was hosting the event said:

“Block Live Asia is the first ever free-to-attend festival that is a sincere delivery of blockchain technology. We are tired of blockchain conferences being increasingly profit-driven, and how the same topics get recycled over and over again. This is our attempt at doing the space justice. Expect a myriad of activities going on around our highlight act, real and stripped down honest talks given by over 60 guest speakers.”

One of the experts in the industry is certainly Mauvis Ledford, CTO at CoinMarketCap specialized in modern web applications, new technologies, and scaling on virtualized cloud environments.

CoinMarketCap is a well-known cryptocurrency market data aggregator that tracks most of the alternative coins that has hit the market as well as Bitcoins, and shows users the current value in dollars and Bitcoins for each coin.

We asked Mauvis to say something about his beginnings and his work as well.

“As a life long learner, I have spent over 12 years honing my skills in the tech industry from design and development, to web performance and security, to consulting and team management. I love to learn and teach what I’ve learned to others. Beyond mastering the technical aspects of my job, my interests lie in rapid prototyping, user testing, hiring star engineers, efficient caching, and improving products through meaningful analytics. I am a supporter of both Scrum and Lean Startup methodologies.”

We have also wanted to know what are some of the major functions his company is planning to add to the platform this year?

Releasing New Mobile Apps, Providing More Types of Data

Ledford exclusively for CoinSpeaker revealed that they were just released new mobile apps for iOS and Android a few days ago.

“We have a few other big projects underway this year centered around providing users more types of data (breadth), enhanced data granularity (depth), 3rd party ratings (context), access to realtime data, and other add-on services and tools to help users understand that data.”

Asked about when do they plan to exclude from Volume (24) section all the exchanges caught in wash trading, according to latest Bitwise report he called it an “incredibly slippery slope”.

“Though we respect Bitwise, their research did not state any formal methodology that can be used to independently rate an exchange by 3rd parties. Nor did Bitwise state any specific timeframe of their research. How can we verify Bitwise’s accuracy. What prevents “verified” exchanges from “going bad” once they are verified or “bad” ones from cleaning up their act. The industry is ever evolving and combating things such as fake volume requires multi-faceted solutions that also need to evolve.”

Just for a reminder, we already wrote of how according to Bitwise Asset Management report, roughly 95% of Bitcoin trading volume reported by this website is fake.

From CoinMarketCap they then said that Bitwise claims that roughly 95 percent of the reported volume is fake and that the real market for BTC is thus “significantly smaller, more orderly, and more regulated than commonly understood”, amounting in reality to $273 million.

Ledford also added that as a data aggregation company they are always focused on providing users with more context and control over their experience on the site so that they can make informed assessments about crypto exchanges.

“Instead of removing data you can expect to see more tools to create custom views and filter through data in a way that is most relevant to each user. We’re also working on adding new metrics to evaluate exchanges beyond volume like liquidity, cold/hot wallet storage etc. To repeat, our role is not to censor data but to provide enough tools and context for users to make their own informed decisions.”