CoinGecko has incorporated 6.5 times more exchange houses to its platform since January 2018. In 2019, a total of 9 exchange houses went into liquidation, closed by authorities or were scams.
The 2019-second quarterly report by CoinGecko, the website of cryptocurrency market analysis, revealed that 302 new exchange houses have been added to its platform since January 2018.
The CoinGecko platform, focused on providing data for cryptocurrency market analysis since 2014, reported that it is currently tracking 347 exchange houses. Of this figure, only 45 were incorporated between 2014 and the end of 2017, which indicates a 6.5-fold increase in the tracking of cryptocurrency exchange houses in the last 18 months.
It is striking that the explosive growth of the number of exchange houses coincided with the bearish cryptocurrency market of 2018 and extended until the new bullish stage of 2019. In this context, the founders of CoinGecko, Bobby Ong and TM Lee, indicated that after last year’s price winter, the cryptocurrency market finally reached the summer. They said that only in the 2019 second quarter, Bitcoin increased by 165%.
According to the information, of the total number of cryptocurrency exchange houses that can be consulted in CoinGecko, 88.5% (307) are centralized and the remaining 11.5% (40) are DEX or decentralized exchange platforms.
More Exchange Houses Closed in 2019
Within the framework of the emergence of a large number of new cryptocurrency exchange houses, several closures have also been raised so far in 2019. The CoinGecko report reflects that at least nine exchange platforms closed their doors for different reasons.
The report accounts for a first group of three exchange houses based in India, which were forced to close their doors in the first half of 2019. These platforms are Coindelta, Coinome and Koinex, which yielded to the strong regulatory pressure from the Central Bank of India.
It should be noted that, in September 2018, there arose a closure of Zebpay, one of the oldest exchange houses in that Asian country. In the same way, just ten days ago, Cryptokart also ceased operations, for a total of five platforms closed by government action in India.
Another group of four exchange houses have gone into liquidation processes in 2019. Among them are included the crypto trading platforms Liqui Exchange from Japan (in January) and Cryptopia from New Zealand (in May), which alleged liquidity problems. The former was affected by the extended bearish market and the latter by a cyber attack in which it lost around US $16 million.
The QuadrigaCX exchange house, of Canadian origin, was also subjected to a liquidation process in April 2019, following a scandal over irregular management of user funds and the loss of more than US $190 million. For its part, Gatecoin, a platform that suffered the theft of 15% of its funds after a hacking attack in 2016, also failed to recover and was forced to close its doors in March 2019.
Finally, two other platforms that closed this year, Bitsane and Coinroom, were identified in the CoinGecko report as exit scams. They just did not provide the service that they were supposed to offer but continued receiving payment from users.
By Willmen Blanco
