Coinbase Fails to Top CryptoCompare’s Exchange Rankings due to 2019 Flash Crash

Published at: Feb. 13, 2020

Coinbase, one of the most popular platforms in the United States, missed out on the number one spot in a ranking of crypto exchanges due to a 2019 Bitcoin (BTC) price glitch.

The major U.S. crypto exchange and wallet service did not get to the top of the latest CryptoCompare’s crypto Exchange Benchmark rankings because its institutional trading arm Coinbase Pro experienced a major Bitcoin price flash crash in October 2019.

CryptoCompare confirmed to Cointelegraph that the glitch was the primary reason behind the five-point drop for Coinbase in the “Negative Reports” section of rankings. “Coinbase would be top without this event, and in fact topped our rankings last year in June, before this event,” the firm noted.

As reported, Coinbase Pro experienced a system glitch that caused the deletion of some stop-loss orders before Bitcoin’s sharp drop from $9,260 to $9,055 on Oct. 31. That wasn’t the first time when Coinbase experienced a flash crash though. Back in 2017, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission was investigating Coinbase over an Ether (ETH) flash crash that occurred on its GDAX exchange. The GDAX glitch caused Ether to drop to just 10 cents from $317 in milliseconds before quickly recovering.

Another U.S.-based exchange ItBit gets the top rank

On Feb. 12, British crypto analytics firm CryptoCompare updated its crypto exchange rankings, releasing an accompanying report covering Q4 2019. The number of analyzed crypto exchanges on the online ranking amounts to 159 platforms at press time.

As previously reported, CryptoCompare’s rankings do not rely on aggregate volume data of exchanges but rather represents the firm’s proprietary risk-based method of ranking.

As such, New York-based ItBit, currently the 20th-largest crypto exchange by 24-hour volume, is now the top platform of the new Exchange Benchmark, while Winklevoss’ Gemini exchange slipped to second place since the previous ranking release.

In order, the top 10 crypto exchanges in CryptoCompare’s third Exchange Benchmark are: ItBit, Gemini, Coinbase, Kraken, Bitstamp, Liquid, Bitfinex, OKEx, bitFlyer and OKCoin.

The new top 10 list included only one newcomer, OKCoin, which was allegedly caused by Poloniex’s departure from the U.S. market in October 2019. Poloniex also saw a decline in their market quality score, CryptoCompare said in an email to Cointelegraph.

Top 10 crypto exchanges in CryptoCompare Exchange Benchmark Q4 2019. Source: CryptoCompare

Only 16% of crypto exchanges hold the majority of funds on cold storage

CryptoCompare launched its Exchange Benchmark in June 2019 in response to a study that claimed that 95% of volume on unregulated exchanges is fake. The analysis also aimed to warn crypto users about the level of risk across the industry, providing an overview of crypto exchanges based on eight major ranking components including regulation, security and market quality.

According to the latest Exchange Benchmark report, only 16% of analyzed crypto exchanges hold more than 95% of their crypto funds on cold storage, while just 4% of exchanges formally offer some form of crypto insurance. Additionally, crypto exchanges that are located in the U.S., Luxembourg, Japan and South Korea are among those associated with the lowest level of risk, according to CryptoCompare.

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