Blog
Join us as we reflect on our journey so far, our vision for the future and why we are committed to shaping and building a more inclusive and transparent digital assets industry.
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This year marks CCData (and CryptoCompare’s) 10th anniversary, celebrating a decade of market-leading cryptocurrency data solutions, indices, and insights that have been pivotal in advancing the adoption of the digital asset industry.
When CCData was founded in 2014, the landscape of digital assets was vastly different from today. The limited regulated channels, absence of traditional investment products for digital assets, and a scarcity of reliable resources and data made navigating the then-nascent sector challenging.
Over the last decade, CCData has tackled these hurdles head-on - creating products that empower users and institutions, providing an unrivalled level of insight and analysis. Today, industry leaders like SIX Digital, MSCI, Singapore Exchange, J.P. Morgan, Refinitiv, and Coinbase leverage our solutions to navigate the digital asset landscape with confidence.
Join us as we reflect on our journey so far, our vision for the future and why we are committed to shaping and building a more inclusive and transparent digital assets industry.
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Our co-founders, Charles and Vlad, founded CCData (then CryptoCompare) in 2014. Back then, the digital asset sector was starkly different from what we know today, with very little infrastructure in place. Coming from traditional finance backgrounds, they were surprised to find the cryptocurrency environment was highly fragmented, with critical information scattered across various forums and channels. Confronted with this reality, Charlie and Vlad felt compelled to intervene and establish a more trusted data-led platform that was transparent, user-centric and unbiased.
They knew that for digital assets to be taken seriously and integrated into broader financial systems, they first needed to be understood. Recognising a critical gap in the market — the need for a centralised, clear, and comprehensive source of cryptocurrency data — CCData (then CryptoCompare) was born, aiming to be a source of truth in this new market.
Working out of Charles’ home in Cambridgeshire, they began piecing together what would become CryptoCompare - creating a platform that would serve as a central hub for cryptocurrency data, inspired by established financial data services.
Later in the year, they raised the first funding round from angels and officially launched the CryptoCompare site. Vlad and Charlie acquired the cryptocompare.com domain in 2015 for seven Bitcoin (this was ~$1000 at that time, at the time of writing, it’d be $250,000 on the same domain today!).
As CryptoCompare matured, it naturally diversified into three core divisions, each addressing a critical need in the evolving digital asset landscape.
The first division focused on data - encompassing spot, derivatives, order book, and most recently, DEX and On-chain solutions too. All of these services are underpinned by our highly robust technical APIs - which, at their peak, handled a staggering 26 billion requests from up to 45.4 million unique users per month.
The second division is indices. In 2017, we partnered with industry leaders like VanEck, Reuters, and Yahoo! Finance, and even played a foundational role in the development of the Nasdaq Cryptocurrency Futures. These collaborations cemented CryptoCompare's position as a trusted data provider for professional investors and institutions.
The third pillar is our media and research arm. This includes our highly regarded Digital Asset Summit (CCDAS)- which we hosted for the first time in 2019 - the flagship institutional event for digital assets in London, which, 5 years later, has hosted the likes of Andreas Antonopolos, Mark Makepeace, Joseph Lubin, Meltem Demoirs, Stani Kulechov, Ophelia Snyder, Dan Held, Tyrone Lobban, and many more.
Traditionally, high trading volume was seen as a positive indicator for an exchange, suggesting healthy user activity and market liquidity. However, this metric became compromised by manipulative practices, including wash trading and falsely reported volumes.
CryptoCompare's response to this challenge was the Exchange Benchmark, the first in the industry to provide a robust methodology and rankings for Exchanges, utilising a unique methodology that combines qualitative assessments (due diligence) with quantitative analysis of market quality based on order books and actual trades.
Since its inception, CCData has expanded its research suite, including our Exchange Review and Stablecoins Report. We’re also proud of the accolades our research has achieved, winning numerous awards for providing unbiased, high-quality insights into the sector.
Today, the Exchange Benchmark remains a valuable industry resource and the report and accompanying rankings are updated on a bi-annual basis. The derived rankings feed into our market-lading data methodologies and aggregate indices, to provide accurate and trusted market pricing.
During this time, the digital asset industry was undergoing another shift. This once fringe asset class dominated by retail investors was starting to capture the attention of institutional heavyweights. We understood that our best-in-class data and leading infrastructure made us a natural fit to cater to this new wave of institutional interest.
From 2018, CryptoCompare refocused its mission to offer the highest institutional-grade data and indices to institutional clients. During this period, the introduction of a real-time order book feed offered institutions a transparent view of market activities. Our partnership with BT Radianz Cloud ensured secure data delivery, reinforcing trust in data integrity.
Additionally, our collaborative efforts with SGX Index Edge to develop cryptocurrency indices laid foundational components for financial products like ETFs. Data services were selected to enhance the product suite of leading firms, including 21Shares, and to support initiatives with the Financial Times and Wilshire, pioneering a suite of digital asset indices and accompanying data dashboard.
During this period, a great deal of work was undertaken to establish best practices in the digital asset class. CCData diligently worked with UK regulatory entities to secure full authorisation as a Benchmark Administrator by the UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) - the second firm in the UK to achieve this feat. This prestigious licensing empowers CCData to issue in-depth market valuation benchmarks, integral to the functionality of premier digital asset products.
We also worked closely with leading industry bodies such as Global Digital Finance, which we are proud to have joined as a founding member and still work closely with today - promoting a shared set of professional standards that include a commitment to comply with relevant regulations.
In 2023, to meet growing institutional demand, CryptoCompare expanded its data offering under a new brand: CCData. The new brand was a natural evolution, representing our focus on data integrity and innovation to further accelerate the adoption of digital assets through our institutional-grade data solutions, indices, market insights and flagship London event, CCDAS.
Data is at the heart of everything we do, and we pride ourselves on the scope and integrity of our data, standardising global sources to safeguard data integrity and ensure consistency and confidence in the market.
As the digital asset sector continues to evolve, we will continue to enhance and refine our market-leading solutions to further accelerate the adoption of digital assets, providing institutions with the information they need to make informed and accurate decisions.
Today, CCData covers almost every corner of the digital asset sector. Our extensive solutions cover 200+, 5,000+ tokens, and 300,000+ currency pairs. Trusted by over 500 institutional clients including regulators, asset managers, and banks, our data powers a wide range of financial products and stretches across the whole digital asset sector. Our API also efficiently handles an ever-growing user base, averaging 40 billion calls monthly with 99.99% uptime.
We’re proud of the contributions we’ve made to this sector over the past ten years and look forward to contributing for many more years to come.
Learn more about CCData here: https://ccdata.io/
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