CoinMarketCap‘s interim CEO Carylyne Chan along with four other executives, Spencer Yang – Vice President of Operations, Growth, and Revenue; Jeremy Seow – Vice President of Products; Matthew Lippl – Global Head of Design and Growth; and Jared Chin – Project Lead and Head of Events, announced their departures from the company. In a recently published blog post, Chan stated,
“I’ve learned just how important it is to have principles that you stick to, and how to lead with grace even when things get tough.”
Its been four months since one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange Binance acquired the market aggregator for about $400 million. Following this deal, CMC’s Founder Brendon Chez, who has managed to keep a low profile while running the website for nearly seven years, stepped down as the CEO of the company and was replaced by the Chief Strategy Officer, Carylyne Chan, as interim CEO.
During that time, Chan had commented that “there won’t be any other major team changes at CoinMarketCap”. However, according to the recent reports, Binance plans to replace the team members that exited with its own staff.
This is fairly controversial because CMC happens to be one of the most-referenced crypto data websites. It is not just the news of the Binance buyout that did not sit well with a section of the community as questions were raised regarding the platform’s neutrality on project listings.
CMC was also criticized for what some may call it “its fresh pro-Binance” stance. The data provider was at the receiving end of a severe backlash from the community after the site switched to web traffic as the default exchange rating mechanism which allowed Binance to top the list.
Responding to the repeated claims, CoinMarketCap has stated,
“No Binance employee, including CZ, has control over CoinMarketCap’s ranking algorithms or listing processes. Cryptoassets that wish to be listed on CoinMarketCap should follow the guidelines in our listing policy and will be fairly and independently evaluated on their merits.”