CoinMarketCap Lists Fake SHIB Addresses, Gets Called Out

The Shiba Inu team has alerted investors by pointing out the three fake SHIB addresses listed by CoinMarketCap on the latter’s platform. 

Shiba Inu Calls Out CoinMarketCap

On January 14th, the team behind the meme cryptocurrency announced via a Twitter post that CoinMarketCap had intentionally listed three fake smart contract addresses of SHIB. The announcement from the team also contained an official warning to all existing and potential investors not to interact with these addresses, claiming that purchasing SHIB from these addresses would lead to irreversible loss of funds. 

Malicious Indifference From CoinMarketCap? 

The Shiba Inu team believes that the incorrect addresses were listed knowingly. Furthermore, the team has mentioned that CoinMarketCap has not been communicative to address the former’s concerns and has continued to keep the incorrect smart contract addresses listed on its platform. Team Shiba Inu has therefore accused the crypto tracking website of intentionally allowing malicious actors to delegitimize SHIB listings. 

The statement concluded, 

“The defense team at Shiba Inu is extraordinarily disappointed by the lack of professionalism demonstrated by CoinMarketCap, a supposed pillar of integrity in the crypto community. We are in contact with CoinMarketCap to have their mistake corrected promptly.”

CoinMarketCap Attempts Damage Control

Soon after the tweet, CoinMarketCap countered by releasing its own statement, explaining that the non-ETH smart contract addresses listed on the @shibtoken page were wormhole addresses that are designed to facilitate cross-chain transactions of wrapped versions of the SHIB asset. Furthermore, they claimed that the addresses were not malicious, saying, 

“There is precedent for us to publish the contract addresses for wrapped assets because it would ultimately streamline the user experience and facilitate cross-chain transactions.”

However, CoinMarketCap’s decision to create wrapped versions of SHIB tokens without developer consent has not been sitting well with the majority of the Shiba Inu community, as evident by the responses to the statement. Users have accused the listing platform of counterfeiting by siphoning the volume away from SHIB. 

Feud With Crypto.com

Interestingly, this is not the first time CoinMarketCap has been in hot waters over inaccuracy issues. Most recently, in December 2021, the CEO of Crypto.com Kris Marszalek had slammed the website for misreporting Crypto.com’s trading volume. According to Marszalek, CoinMarketCap had arbitrarily changed the ranking to 14th, with a trading volume of $1.8 billion. Unfortunately, CoinMarketCap blamed a bug in the system and treated the matter lightly. The bug eventually led to the astronomical increase in the price of cryptocurrencies that had a knock-on effect on crypto services relying on data from CoinMarketCap. 

Disclaimer: This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.