Time and time again whenever I am researching a post I come across CoinGecko (as well as CoinMarketGap, but that is another subject for another day!) as a source of the data that I share and so I thought it was high time to have a deeper look at who they are, what they do and analyse their relability.
Incidentally, while I am at it, you may have noticed that I very rarely if ever quote my sources. This is not bad practice or laziness as some might assume; rather it is an encouragement for you to DYOR. Never just simply take my word for it, check it out for yourself/ves.
Founded in 2014, CoinGecko is a major global cryptocurrency data aggregator, that tracks multiple metrics across thousands of digital assets. They pull data from more than 800 exchanges and apply filtering algorithms to reduce manipulation, making them one of the most widely used sources for crypto market data, as I have already mentioned.
They are best known for providing real‑time market data including prices, volumes, liquidity, market caps and historical charts among other things. In addition to this they provide an exchange trust score, namely a proprietary system which evaluates liquidity, operational scale, and security to assess exchange reliability for the benefit of their users. Further more with a focus on Transparency to maintain public trust concerning security, compliance, and SOC 2 requirements they provide traders, developer and institutions with API and whole range of analytics.
This is all very nice, but when it comes down to the nitty-gritty, we need to have an idea of how reliable it is. I guess bad information is worse than no information. The good news is that multiple sources have shown me that their overall reliability is rated as moderately high, but not perfect with different sources evaluate them differently.
Firstly to focus on the positives, they source their data from from hundreds of exchanges which gives them broad market visibility and at the same time their Trust Score algorithm makes good on removing suspicious volume and unreliable exchange data. At the same time with the aforementioned focus on security and compliance, they are proactively pursuing SOC 2 Type II certification and regularly publish detailed security controls in a demonstratively transparent way. They also represent a neutral and more objective analysis, which to many users is great news. This is unlike CoinMarketCap (owned by Binance), because they have maintained their independence from all of themajor exchanges
On the other hand with a poor 2.2/5 Trustpilot rating and complaints about bugs and occasional inaccurate listings they do have their problems. Furthermore to compound this the Traders Union Trust Index only rates CoinGecko as 2.9/5, with low customer loyalty and user review scores. This is largely down to the occasional data discrepancy, with some users reporting mismatches between CoinGecko and other aggregators (e.g., Nomics, CMC) and of course like all data aggregator it is inevitably limited, even with sophisticated filtering. At the end of the day, no aggregator can fully eliminate wash trading or unreliable exchange feeds and CoinGecko are no exception.
So when it comes down to it, how should we use CoinGecko as a tool?
My research heavily leans on the idea of treating CoinGecko as a strong first reference and not a single source of truth (for the academics among us it is also the way we should look at Wikipedia) and we should always cross‑check important data, including prices or volumes with CoinMarketCap, Binance, or Kraken and especially when accuracy matters.
And with that cautionary bit of advice I wish, as always for you to stay safe and well as always my friends.
