Exclusive: CoinGecko CEO Bobby Ong opens up about the backstory of the HitBTC “cooperation;” Part 1

Facts and façades, should naturally deviate but often converge.

 The cryptocurrency community has been privy to proponents of various camps building a façade of sorts in order to talk up their books, pump their price, or blur the lines between projects. From the BitConnect scam of yesteryear to the various copy-cats of Bitcoin, the misrepresentation game is one at the core of the decentralised currency industry.

 CoinGecko, the markets aggregator was on the receiving end of one of these crypto-facades, at the hands of the digital assets exchange HitBTC. Bobby Ong, the CEO and co-founder of CoinGecko, in an exclusive interview with AMBCrypto called out representatives from the exchange on their “grossly misconstrued,” statements propping up a “partnership,” between the two parties, when there was none.

 The backstory for this “partnership,” turned “cooperation,” bears immense importance.

 HitBTC is not your average run-of-the-mill exchange, in all its purity, nor is its one that is way out there pumping its books, its somewhere in between the “real,” and the “fake.” With several reports accusing the exchange of inching close to liquidation, funneling customer funds preventing withdrawals, and even manipulating trade volume in order to present a more favourable image, the exchange is not in the clear by any means.

 In the midst of all these alleged accusations, CoinGecko taking a page from these reports built a grading system for exchanges called “Trust Score,” which was hailed as an important step to fight fraudulent exchange. As the two-parallel news was setting their own waves, HitBTC announced, initially, that it had entered a “partnership” with the markets aggregator to “fight against fake volumes and providing global transparency.”

 Curiosity grew, as the community wondered why the CoinGecko would ‘partner’ with an exchange with known volume-muddling issues. Bobby Ong later clarified that calling their association a “partnership,” was a “misrepresentation,” by HitBTC, and the term “cooperation,” was appropriate.

 The markets aggregator added that the cooperation will seek to “gather more data” in order to improve “exchange transparency.”