CoinMarketCap Crypto Assets Now Feature Flipside Letter Grades

Blockchain analytics startup Flipside Crypto is bringing crypto asset letter grades to a slew of online publishers.

The Fundamental Crypto Asset Score (FCAS) metric – which evaluates factors such as developer activity and a broad set of transaction data – was recently added to CoinMarketCap, along with publishers such as MarketWatch, TheStreet and Stocktwits. The move comes ahead of the launch of CoinMarketCap’s first Android app, scheduled for April.

Carylyne Chan, head of global marketing at CoinMarketCap, told CoinDesk these easy-to-use metrics will give users a more transparent view of how these assets are evolving. According to Chan, the site attracted 125 million repeat visitors in 2018 alone.

She added:

“If I’m a new user coming in with more tools and fundamental analysis like FCAS, the focus will be more holistic as opposed to only looking at the front page with the price.”

Plus, she added this partnership is part of a broader push to add educational content to CoinMarketCap, such as explainers about blockchain technology and how different groups like developers impact the ecosystem.

“It will be a good addition to the price and market data that we already have there,” Chan said. “There is a wider scope of collaboration that we’ll be working on with [Flipside Crypto].”

Flipside raised

a $4.5 million seed round last November and has since launched several products with different types of analysis. These include a portfolio tracker for crypto hedge funds and professional investors, the Hubble Monitor for companies and projects seeking to understand how users interact with their blockchain network, and the Coin Health Library for retail consumers looking for a deeper look at how the FCAS score is calculated and how more than 450 assets grow over time.

According to Chan, the most popular asset pages from 2018 include XRP, bitcoin, Tron and ether, all of which have relatively high FCAS ratings.

Flipside Crypto CEO Dave Balter told CoinDesk that, while dynamic FCAS ratings change according to live input from external exchanges and websites like GitHub, he estimates that only around 18 projects have high ratings like “Superb” or “Attractive.” (The "S" grade is actually higher than the "A" grade, differing from, say, your high-school report card.)

Roughly 350 projects have the lowest rating, "F" for “Fragile.”

Balter said he hopes FCAS will someday become comparable to the price-to-earnings ratio used to analyze traditional stocks.

“Let's look at crypto projects as if they were sophisticated businesses,” Balter added. “2019 is all about helping the market understand how to evaluate these assets beyond price.”

Indeed, MarketWatch general manager Dan Shar told CoinDesk that compared to traditional asset classes, readers often find cryptocurrency has “the least holistic view in terms of being able to compare these assets to each other.”

Now by listing the top 10 assets, as ranked by FCAS, in addition to the FCAS score on articles and pages related to a specific cryptocurrency, Shar said publishers like MarketWatch can strive to offer “as many tools and actionable insights as possible” for more sophisticated investment choices.

Image of co-founders, left to right, Dave Balter, Eric Stone and Jim Myers via Flipside Crypto