Great variance in market cap lists

[ehssoad]

Hi, I've been looking into different sites presenting market cap lists for cryptocurrencies and have seen that there is a lot of variance.
 - Not the same market cap value for a currency in the lists.
 - The top 5 are different on each list.
 - Lists range from showing 300 to 3000 different coins

Question is if there is any consensus about which one is more trustworthy than the other?

I'm writing a master thesis in the subject of technology trajectories affecting the variance in cryptocurrencies and need to have reliable data.

Take a look at these which I've been looking at:
http://www.cryptocoinrank.com
http://www.cryptocoincharts.info/coins/info
http://coinmarketcap.com

Any comments are valuable.
Thanks
B. S. Adams

[Lauda]

The difference is minor and it can be disregarded.
http://coinmarketcap.com/  Supply: 14, 115, 250BTC  ; avg price: 233,57$
http://www.cryptocoinrank.com/  Supply: 14, 115, 300 BTC  ;avg price 235,50$

The difference is there because they don't get information from the same sources. It depends on how many and which exchanges they're incorporating into the statistics.
There isn't some real consensus and you can even calculate everything on your own (shouldn't be too hard). I've always used http://coinmarketcap.com/ in the past.

[Q7]

Is the figure on market cap really that important as in the case of bitcoin? Market capitalization does not necessarily represent the actual value of each coin. If you decide to liquidate all the coins to fiat at the same time, I'm sure you will not get the exact value for all. It's more towards representation of the size rather than it's worth.

To answer your question, market cap generally means multiplying the average value of the coins and the number of coins taken into calculation at that time. Thus different value in either one of these will give you a varying number when you make the calculation.

[Bizmark13]

Coinmarketcap.com is the main one that most people around here use. One reason why different market cap rankings might have different coins in the top 5 could could be due to filtering of premined and non-mineable currencies. I see Cryptocoinrank.com doesn't display NXT, Ripple, and BitShares at all. These coins weren't mined but were instead pre-generated and distributed through other means. Furthermore, different exchanges might also have different weightings across sites which often result in sites displaying different prices.

Here's another one to add to the list. I don't use it personally but I've seen it mentioned around here a few times:

http://www.cryptmarketcap.com/

[gjhiggins]

I'm writing a master thesis in the subject of technology trajectories affecting the variance in cryptocurrencies and need to have reliable data.

Question is if there is any consensus about which one is more trustworthy than the other?

Strange question. A consensus is a collective perception, it's most unlikely you'll get any reliable data by taking this approach.

I predict you will need to define carefully your concept of “reliable”. There is a key difference between alts and stocks in that (AIUI) maintaining and submitting a full record of each and every stock trade is obligatory and mandated by legislation. No such accounting reliability attaches to altcoin trading. Trading records must be assumed to have an indeterminate degree of inaccuracy and to be, overall, incomplete.

The term “market capitalization” is only analogous in this context and in order for the analogy to be perceived as useful, the mapping has to be fudged: “equal to the share price times the number of shares outstanding”. The argument “shares === coins” has not been accepted unconditionally by everyone, I'm given to understand that establishing a market cap for Ripple remains a contentious issue.

I recommend you peer into the horse's mouth so to speak and start inspecting the contents of the data streams emitted by the various exchange APIs (where an API exists, else you'll need to pagescrape). That will give you the most reliable data.

Cheers

Graham

[yayayo]

There are multiple exchanges, so it depends from where the data originate. There might also be variations in the total amount of coins considered (supply) due to different issuance/pre-mine/coinloss-inclusion criteria.

I think market-cap considerations for the majority of altcoins are not meaningful at all, because their trading volume is so low. A single order could push them up or down several ranks in the list.

ya.ya.yo!

[o0‡0o]

You honestly using www.cryptocoinrank.com ? it has faircoin at number seven with a massive 24hvolume of $90.
YuanBaocoin a top 10 with a 24h volume of $20
no ripple, litecoin, dash, nxt......
wake up

[Lorenzo]

I'm given to understand that establishing a market cap for Ripple remains a contentious issue.

Coinmarketcap.com says $257,071,246 with a total supply of 31,908,551,587 XRP.
Cryptorank.com doesn't have it listed.
Cryptocoincharts.info has it listed but doesn't show any figures ($0 with a total supply of 0).
Cryptmarketcap.com doesn't have it listed either.

It seems that many of these market cap lists exclude Ripple from their rankings. I couldn't find any option to show premined or non-mineable currencies like Coinmarketcap.com does either.

Take a look at these which I've been looking at:
http://www.cryptocoinrank.com

This one doesn't even have Litecoin listed properly. The supply looks to be correct but the value and trading volume is shown as $0. Perhaps some of their data sources are off or otherwise unavailable, or maybe it's an API issue.

You honestly using www.cryptocoinrank.com ? it has faircoin at number seven with a massive 24hvolume of $90.
YuanBaocoin a top 10 with a 24h volume of $20
no ripple, litecoin, dash, nxt......
wake up

Low volume coins tend to do that. Most market cap lists have the option to exclude low volume coins since they can mess up the rankings like that. The absense of Ripple and NXT seems to have been done on purpose. Notice how BitShares-PTS (which can be mined) is there but BitShares (which cannot be mined) isn't.