On 7:12 PM · Mar 1, 2022 , on behalf of both Ryan Cox(Hex investor) and all Hex investors affected, Binance, CoinMarketCap and affiliates were officially served with a class action law suit, in regards to the intentional suppression of Hex.
Line 3 of the document says:
Plaintiff alleges that Defendants have worked by various unlawful means to artificially suppress the value of HEX and artificially inflate the value of other cryptocurrencies.
We have seen this first hand since the beginning of Hex, as Hex is still intentionally locked at position #201 with a $19,688,042,954 market cap on https://coinmarketcap.com/?page=3 . If you look at the market cap, which gives a coin its ranking on the website, Hex should appropriately be #11 spot between AVAX at $20,749,897,971 and Binance USD at $17,990,675,311 as of March 9, 2022 at 10:23 am PST. The importance of this is due to how reliant a large portion of investors are on how coins rank in market cap for evaluation on investment purchases.
Line 6 states:
Nic Carter, a partner at venture capital firmCastle Island Ventures, and co-founder of CoinMetrics.io wrote an article detailing the relationship between exchanges, coin ranking sites, and retail investors.1 He explains:
[Rankings sites] occupy a fêted position in the industry. Ostensibly, they performa useful service to investors and receive little in return aside from ad revenue.But the under-reported reality is more sinister. Rankings sites are squarely at the center of the extractive game that siphons money from retail investors and deposits it into the pockets of altcoin creators and exchange operators.
The problem with the [altcoin casino | altcoin issuer | rankings site] troika i show neatly intertwined all their incentives are, and how poorly-educated users are about each. In many cases, “exchanges” is a misnomer. These things aremore akin to the bucket shops of the 20s, the boiler rooms of the 80s, or the unregulated poker sites of the early 2000s, which ran fractional reserves or granted insiders special access to the hole cards of unwitting players.
Quite simply, most of the crypto-to-crypto exchanges have nothing in common with exchanges like the NYSE or the NASDAQ. While some investors are aware of this, many mistakenly believe them to have integrity[.]
The document goes on to explain how "ad revenue" is not the only way CoinMarketCap makes its money. Below is a flow chart of how value flows between these entities:
CoinMarketCap was purchased in April of 2020 for $400 Million by Binance. See line 19 for one simple conflict of interest:
Coindesk reported that Andy Cheung, former chief operating officer at OKEx and founder of crypto derivative platform ACDX stated that the acquisition was“‘not very good for the industry given the conflict of interest between the parties’ missions” and that “[Cheung pointed]to Binance’s exchange token,BNB[AKA Binance Coin],as an example
It goes even further than merely having their own token on CoinMarketCap however. CoinMarketCap has the power to ruin a cryptocurrencies reputation, manipulate its price and more. from lines 22-24:
In a 2019, interview with Forbes Magazine Adel de Meyer, the CEO of DAPSCoin, noted that “[a]ranking authority with the size and reputation ofCoinMarketCap has the capacity to essentially hide a [Cryptocurrency]at will.”
Adel de Meyer also noted that CoinMarketCap.com’s dominance provided the“option for collusion, corruption, and coercion[.]”She further noted that CoinMarketCap.com seemed to reduce some market caps arbitrarily leaving investors and traders confused” and “damaging the reputation” of cryptocurrencies so impacted. She concluded that CoinMarketCap.com’s flawed rankings, were “dangerous” and posed a risk to retail investors.
.In addition to “hiding” a cryptocurrency, CoinMarketCap.com has the ability to artificially inflate the value of a Cryptocurrency. For example, Mr. Carter notes that by listing an artificially high market cap for advertiser and cryptocurrency BitConnect “CoinMarketCap directly enabled” it to “siphon around $100m from investors[.]”. The SEC also made note of CoinMarketCap’s popularity and its advertising relationship with BitConnect in its suit against BitConnect’s promoters.
While some may have been familiar with just how corrupt the space has become due to these bad actors, this may be quite a shock to many of you.
And just when you think it couldn't get much worse, the read all the way through line 87 lays out perfectly just how corrupt Binance, CoinMarketCap and affiliates truly are. They have even been caught manipulating how exchanges are ranked 6 weeks after purchasing CoinMarketCap in order to put Binance in the #1 spot. Read here starting from line 76:
CoinMarketCap.com’s website makes the following representations:
CoinMarketCap strictly follows and enforces its independent listing criteria guidelines, circulating supply calculation methods and liquidity score for how it ranks crypto assets.
Crypto assets that wish to be listed on CoinMarketCap should follow the guide lines in our listing policy and will be fairly and independently evaluated on their merits.
CoinMarketCap's official ranking criteria is designed to eliminate any possibility of preferential treatment . . .
CoinMarketCap will continue to present the most accurate data on cryptocurrencies to the wider public independently.
Our mission at CoinMarketCap has always been to provide all our users with the
most accurate and relevant information to select exchanges and tokens to invest and trade in.
Yet on line 79 we see a direct contradiction to the above highlighted statement:
A May 29, 2020 article in CoinTelegraph further reported:
New CMC metrics accused of favoring Binance. On May 14, CoinMarketCap launched its new “web traffic factor.” The criterion seeks to analyze the user activity on exchanges, including the number of page views unique visitors, the time spent on site, search engine bounce rate, and search engin rankings.
CMC’s new parent company, top-ranking crypto exchange Binance, received criticism for the web traffic metric’s introduction because Binance claimed the top spot as a result. A similar metric was previously considered and rejected by CoinMarketCap prior to its recent change in ownership.
As we can see, Binance and affiliates seem to be working to tilt the crypto sphere in their financial favour.
Hex was first suppressed September 27, 2020, when it was locked in position #201 on page 3 of CoinMarketCap. The document goes on to lay out how CoinMarketCap's locking of Hex at 201 has not only suppressed Hex's price but also artificially inflated numerous other cryptocurrencies including a crypto that is made by Binance themselves. This has affected both users of Hex and those who would have purchased Hex had the ranking system had Hex in its rightful position in spot 6 or higher for much of 2021, with Hex reaching what would have been a number 3 ranking for a short while had it not been locked. Read from line 80 through 125 for the detailed report of this summary.
The rabbit hole only gets deeper(Lines 128-131):
Upon information and belief, Bitcoin is also the most commonly traded cryptocurrency on Binance and Binance US’s exchanges and a key profit driver for both exchanges.
Changpeng Zhao stated in a February2021 interview that he keeps nearly100% of his 1.9 billion USD net worth in cryptocurrencies.
Upon information and belief he has also stated that Bitcoin is one of his favorite cryptocurrencies to hold.
Upon information and belief, all Individual Defendants have large holdings ofBitcoin, Binance Coin, Binance USD, and other cryptocurrencies.
.HEX was intended, at least in part, to serve as an alternative to Bitcoin’s model. If this alternative succeeds, the price of Bitcoin and other similar cryptocurrencies, will be lower than it would be otherwise be, creating a financial detriment to the Individual Defendants.
So now we see what could be even more incentive for Binance and affiliates involved to suppress Hex. Not only do they stand to benefit from everything we've talked about up to this point, now they seem to have a personal interest in seeing other cryptocurrencies increase in dollar value. Unbelievable!
There are 5 causes of action which in detail lay out all of the ways Hex has been suppressed, Investors have lost profits and how Binance and affiliates have manipulated data and cause this entire situation. Please read the document linked below for the exact transcript of the September 21, 2021 filing, but we won't go any further in this blog.
While there has been no resolution to this situation yet, it is still safe to assume that this may be one of the most redefining moments in Hex's history. It could completely change the worlds opinion of where Hex stands in comparison to all other crypto's.
Will this cause the flood gates to be opened when this case is settled? Do you think justice will be served? Leave a comment below and let us know what you think, as well as share this so more investors or people interested in cryptocurrency can see this.
Thanks so much for reading!