Educational Byte: Why You Can’t Always Trust Token Prices on CoinMarketCap

CoinMarketCap (CMC) and CoinGecko are some of the most popular tools in the crypto world. But they don’t always aggregate all exchanges, and not all exchanges show the same price at the same time. Some even inflate trading activity with fake trades to make a token look more popular and valuable than it really is.

CoinMarketCap (CMC), CoinGecko, and similar websites are some of the most popular tools in the crypto world. You type in the name of a coin or token, and boom: a neat chart and a price staring back at you, often down to the penny.

It feels pretty official, right? Like the price you see there is the price you would get if you bought or sold that token at this moment. The catch is that those prices aren’t as reliable as they seem. And if you’re not ...