## STOP MAKING MISTAKES with coinmarketcap.com by reading this for just 2 minutes or less!

![commentmoney.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmdfoPySB83M6Csoyi9B9Db21DywDEGP4agAVfnDHybdVr/commentmoney.png)

![coinmarketcap-mar292017.jpg](https://steemitimages.com/DQmXqAwFzAzMKS653PwrLK2PZo66y5uz9bbwQuLtaSq9yBe/coinmarketcap-mar292017.jpg)

**Pros**
- coinmarketcap.com is very popular
- it is easy to use, just LOOK the page

**Cons**
- coinmarketcap.com is very popular
- it is easy to get bad marketcap info, just LOOK at the page

**Q:** *Ok, this does not make any sense. How can being popular be both a PRO and a CON?*
**A:** If everyone is using it, and only a minority know how to really read it, it means that the majority is trading with false perceptions of what the data is showing. (This is how sharks stay wealthy, and everyone else is shark bait)

**Q:** *Ok, what bad marketcap info are you talking about?*
**A:** It is going to take me 120 seconds to tell you, but you have to actually read this post. It is not glanceable like coinmarketcap.com   *LMAO* :)

![coinmarketcap-lesson.jpg](https://steemitimages.com/DQmTBakC57JtJcED5UojyMgUjoeBmxQje1yKXVyKGCEPoBD/coinmarketcap-lesson.jpg)

**A VERY FAST lesson of how coins appear on coinmarketcap.com**
1. Coin must be on some recognized exchanges, and each exchange needs an API for the feed data
1. Coin price is determined by average price from multiple exchanges
1. Average price is weighted by the trading volume of major exchanges

***That is it!***

Now let us find out what can go wrong (and is actually wrong) with a lot of coins shown in the top 100 on coinmarketcap.com

#### Any coin can be falsely represented on the first page of coinmarketcap.com if any of these points are true:

1. **PRE-MINE:** 
The coin had a huge pre-mine.  Pre-mined coins just have an asterix ** beside them

1. **SCAM-LAUNCH:** 
A coin without fair distribution can be listed (ie: the founder released buggy code during the first start of the blockchain to gain an unfair advantage and scam a lot of coins this way)

1. **ARTIFICIAL PUMP OR DUMP:**
Coins with a pre-mine and/or scam launch often have bots created by the pre-mine or scamlaunch holders to buy and sell these pre-mined and scam-launched coins to themselves to artificially raise the price on exchanges, which directly affects how a coin is listed on coinmarketcap.com

**The majority of people buying and selling coins these days are amateur traders who look at coinmarketcap.com like it is a real indication of what coins are trending.** 

![you-questions.jpg](https://steemitimages.com/DQmQCaBV4y6YGqr64Na85RP3yhbbpqhhsi9C3QyRhie3nwW/you-questions.jpg)

#### Let me ask you some questions:

**Q1:** Where are the help pages and documentation on coinmarketcap.com? Go find it. Do you see it?

**Q2:** Where are the disclosures about the accuracy of the information?

**Q3:** Where are the warnings, disclosures, and advice to users when making determinations from that data?

If you are like me, as of the writing of this post, Q1, Q2, and Q3 *none of that exists!!

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### So if you were a coin developer, or investor, could you manipulate ranking of the coin of your choice on coinmarketcap.com knowing how simple the formula is? 

### Of course you could.

If you were a skilled and experienced user, could you do research and make your own decision about which coins are a bad investment? Of course.

**Herein lies the problem:**

The majority, and I mean, HUGE MAJORITY of all coins bought and sold each day, are done with the trending charts and numbers shown on coinmarketcap.com because that is what all the shark bait newbies use, when making their investments.

Even the sharks use coinmarketcap.com to look through the rose-colored glasses that shark bait wears, to either manipulate the chart data (to cause a shark bait feeding frenzy), or to spot which coins shark baits are likely to buy or dump next.

Are you a shark? Or are you shark bait?  You might be both without knowing it.

![sharkbait.jpg](https://steemitimages.com/DQmRGrynHH6gQ3VNpHtwhvMG2j76QXieK3ub5hZft8Y8cjc/sharkbait.jpg)

**Why this is a problem:**

1. Money is quite often getting invested in *poor technologies* that only seem to have a good looking coinmarketcap.com chart or growth numbers.  That is not good for the industry

1. *Scam coins, and coins that do not scale, are getting way more attention and following than they deserve*

1. Developers, marketers, communities, and adopters are *wasting life hours* with a coin that won't be around in 5 or 10 years

1. There are only a few Developers, marketers, communities, and adopters that are  investing time with good, fairly distributed coins. (We need more)  **This hurts the evolution of cryptocurrency as a whole.**

![question-mark-face.gif](https://steemitimages.com/DQmY6jcaDn1ASn4bEYtDozyafZzK6Be1uhSfnZy2efxUe43/question-mark-face.gif)

**When will this change?**

After people learn the hard way on how to stop being shark bait.  Or...

Maybe after coinmarketcap.com changes their formulas to make their data less easy to manipulate by including **reputation rank, much like Google does a PageRank**, to weed out manipulated coins, scam coins, pre-mined coins, and unfairly distributed coins, by weighting each coin based on new industry standards for coin reputation.

![coin-reputationrank.jpg](https://steemitimages.com/DQmVRNdtS3HBNxY4PboPbF9P1st7bTfNhxPqfpgX1QWPwmZ/coin-reputationrank.jpg)
I will talk about coin reputation rank in an upcoming post.  If you are an entrepreneur and would like a business opportunity to build on...

# COIN REPUTATION RANK is an indicator that will help us get out of this mess.

P.S. This is why STEEM and BITSHARES don't trend as high as other coins. Just so you know.