CoinMarketCap Explained: The Captain's Guide

CoinMarketCap is a website that provides real-time information on the cryptocurrencies available on the market. It’s an essential tool for any crypto investor, as it lets you track the price movements, trading volumes and market capitalizations of the thousands of digital currencies out there. Personally, as a trader, I lean more toward TradingView. That said, for an investor, CoinMarketCap is more than enough!

Thanks to CoinMarketCap, investors and traders can follow the market’s news in real time from multiple angles. You can view the charts and historical data of a specific currency, or even compare different cryptos and crypto platforms against one another.

CoinMarketCap is genuinely useful for keeping an eye on the entire crypto market in just 2 or 3 scrolls.

How to Use CoinMarketCap

To use CMC effectively, it’s important to get a good grasp of its interface and the different features on offer. Here’s a detailed walkthrough of the CoinMarketCap interface and its main features:

Homepage

The CoinMarketCap homepage displays a list of the market’s leading cryptocurrencies, ranked by market capitalization. You can click on a cryptocurrency’s name to open its detailed page.

The Different Elements of the Homepage

The Top Bar

Here you’ll find the number of listed cryptocurrencies, the number of exchange platforms, the market capitalization as of today’s date, the volume traded over 24h, the dominance of the 2 leading cryptos (BTC, ETH), the average gas price to make an ETH transaction on the Ethereum network, the menu’s language selector, the reference currency (EUR, in this example), the theme selector (light or dark), the gems earned, the log-in button and, finally, the “Sign up” button.

Market dominance: Market dominance is the total market share of a cryptocurrency relative to the entire cryptocurrency market. This metric can give an indication of a cryptocurrency’s popularity and its influence on the market as a whole.

The Second Bar

The second bar contains a menu with various tabs that lead to more detailed sub-menus. We’ll come back to this in more depth later in the article. On the right, you’ll see 3 items in a muted color: Watchlist, Portfolio and Search. To access the watchlist, you first need to have signed up on the site.

The Search Bar

In the top right of the homepage, there’s a search bar that lets you look up a specific cryptocurrency. You can search for a cryptocurrency by its name or by its symbol.

The Highlights

On the right-hand side, you can toggle the Highlights button on or off; it’s designed to spotlight the latest news on the leading cryptocurrencies: trends, community posts, top searched hashtags, and so on.

The Famous Top 100 Cryptos by Market Cap

The cryptocurrency table shows the key information for each cryptocurrency in the Top 100, such as its name, symbol, price, market capitalization, 24h trading volume, circulating supply, and so on. You can sort the table by its different columns or filter the cryptocurrencies according to specific criteria.

On the left, you’ll find two customizable tabs: Watchlist and Portfolio.

CoinMarketCap: Portfolio Tracking

CoinMarketCap also offers tools to track your crypto portfolio. You can add cryptos to your portfolio or to your watchlists and follow it all in real time. Both of these features are very handy, but you need to be signed up to access them. That said, nothing revolutionary here — it’s something everyone offers…

A Crypto’s Detailed Page: Coin and Token

By clicking on a cryptocurrency’s name in the table, you open its detailed page. This page presents more in-depth information about the cryptocurrency, such as its price chart, price history, market ranking, technical details, and so on.

CoinMarketCap: The Ranking Criteria

Like its competitor CoinGecko, CoinMarketCap is one of the most widely used sites for tracking cryptocurrency performance. The ranking criteria this site uses can help investors understand the importance of each digital asset and make informed investment decisions.

First Categorization Bar

This first bar lets you set up an initial ranking based on what you’re specifically looking for. In particular, it lets you narrow things down to your portfolio, but also to search by category (DeFi, NFT, and so on) or by blockchain (Polkadot, Solana, and so on).

Once you’ve chosen the category or sub-category, you can rank your cryptos by the following criteria:

Price

A cryptocurrency’s price is an important ranking criterion, because it reflects a balance between supply and demand. It can also help investors determine whether a crypto is overvalued (overbought) or undervalued (oversold) compared with other investment options.

Price Change

It’s expressed in points over 3 timeframes : 1 hour, 1 day (24h), one week (7d)

Market Capitalization | Market Cap

A cryptocurrency’s “market” capitalization equals the total number of coins in circulation multiplied by the current market price. This gives an indication of the cryptocurrency’s overall value. The higher the market capitalization, the more important the cryptocurrency is considered to be. BTC and ETH make up the majority of the crypto sector’s total capitalization.

Transaction Volume:

Transaction volume indicates the amount of cryptocurrency that has been traded over 24h. A high transaction volume can be a sign of increased interest in the crypto in question. It can also indicate high liquidity, which can be important for investors looking to buy or sell cryptocurrencies.

Circulating Supply

a cryptocurrency’s availability across different exchanges can indicate its popularity and its liquidity. The more a cryptocurrency is available across different exchanges, the more likely it is to be traded or used.

Each ranking criterion can give an indication of a cryptocurrency’s health and popularity. Investors should be aware of these criteria when evaluating different investment options, and must factor in the risks associated with each investment.

The Different Sections of CoinMarketCap

CoinMarketCap offers a wide variety of features to help users research cryptocurrencies.

Here’s a detailed overview of the different sections of CoinMarketCap:

Cryptocurrencies

This section provides another way to categorize all the cryptocurrencies listed on CoinMarketCap. It lets you refine your search with more precise filters: Recently Added, Gainers and Losers, and so on.

Crypto Platforms

This section provides a list of the platforms that allow the exchange or trading of cryptocurrencies. It’s divided into 3 sub-sections: Spot (Spot market), Derivatives (Futures and Options) and DEX (Decentralized exchanges). It lets users see each exchange’s trading volume, trading pairs, and so on.

Among the various popular exchanges featured on CoinMarketCap, you’ll find Binance, Coinbase, Bitfinex, Huobi, OKEx, Bitstamp, and many others. Each exchange has its own set of characteristics, advantages and drawbacks.

Community

The “Community” tab on CoinMarketCap is a space dedicated to community discussions around cryptocurrencies and blockchain projects. It’s divided into two sub-sections: Feeds and Articles. They’re populated by members of the community.

Products

The Products tab is divided into 3 main categories (Products, Campaigns, Calendars — i.e. tools, info campaigns and calendars). These are themselves broken down into various useful items: for example, the converter tool that lets you convert a crypto’s price into a fiat currency ($, €, CHF, and so on), or the ICO calendar and the Airdrops. As on CoinGecko, you can also earn rewards and diamonds, or take advantage of a referral link.

Learn Trading

The “Learn” tab lists links pointing to various sites that let you learn more about the crypto market, notably Alexandria. This CMC section specializes in cryptocurrency education. One small caveat: all of this content is still in English only.

News: CoinMarketCap offers a news sub-section that lets you stay informed about the latest developments in the world of cryptocurrencies. These are English-language articles drawn from various English-speaking sites devoted to the crypto world.

CoinMarketCap: Strengths and Tips

• Price alerts: (available only on the mobile app) You can choose to receive notifications by email or on your mobile phone.
• Charts : CoinMarketCap offers interactive charts for every cryptocurrency listed on its site. A TradingView mode is also available.
• Search filters : The advanced search filters let you look up cryptocurrencies based on several criteria such as market capitalization, trading volume, performance, and so on.
• Exchange liquidity: Make sure you check for sufficient liquidity on the exchanges. Low liquidity can signal difficulty buying or selling assets quickly.
• API: CoinMarketCap has an API that lets developers pull real-time cryptocurrency data to use in their own applications.

My Verdict and Conclusion

CoinMarketCap is a must-have platform for cryptocurrency investors. It offers a user-friendly interface that gives you access to the key crypto information — the kind that’s indispensable to investors and traders alike. It lets you research the platforms. It also provides tracking tools such as price alerts and charts. The ranking criteria CoinMarketCap uses are very useful too. In short, this platform is an essential tool for anyone looking to get started with cryptocurrency investing..