In the second quarter of 2018, Coinbase showed the world how much money it could waste. The exchange spent $100M to buy Earn.com. This figure is about to be dwarfed by the richest man in Crypto.

Binance is now acquiring CoinMarketCap for a reported $400M. To put numbers in perspective, Huffington Post, one of the world’s most-read news sites was acquired by AOL for $350M. At the time of the acquisition, Huffington Post had over 25 million monthly unique readers. Meanwhile, CMC barely hits 25 million in traffic count even when counting repeat visitors. Most of CoinMarketCap’s visitors are repeat users who check market prices several times a day, hinting that the site has a fraction of the 25 million unique users Huff Post held at the time of its acquisition. This undoubtedly places CoinMarketCap as the most overpriced acquisition in Crypto history.

What is CZ Paying

The major crypto acquisition deal is supposed to be declared this week. The largest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance, is hoping to buy a crypto data site that is globally ranked among the top 1,000 sites.

This will be the most expensive acquisition within the crypto space. However, both the firms haven’t disclosed anything about the deal’s specifics. Earlier this year, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao stated that a couple of acquisitions were in the organization’s pipeline. This purchase will undoubtedly have a notable impact on Binance’s influence.

Binance is recognized as the largest exchange in terms of the crypto trading volume. It is also the wealthiest given the value of its highly liquid BNB token. The exchange already acquired several firms this year, including Dappreview, Wazirx (an exchange based in India) and Mars Finance.

Controversy Engulfs Binance’s Acquisition

The acquisition’s story has hit crypto forums and social channels and various market thought leaders are discussing whether the deal would have a positive or negative impact on CoinMarketCap. Some individuals also highlighted Binance and Tron’s relationship, and how the market’s most used data site could be modified, after the acquisition, to benefit not only Binance’s BNB, but also the tokens of projects held by CZ’s friends.

On Twitter, most comments were negative in terms of sentiment.

Based on available information, Binance’s acquisition of CMC is apparently a cash-and-stock deal. Most of CMC’s traffic is from U.S., Brazil, and India, comprised of users visit the site regularly, often at an hourly basis. According to SimilarWeb’s analysis, in the last six months, more than 200 million users visited the site, 80% higher than Binance.

Whether Binance uses this acquisition to squeeze out its competition is yet to be seen. CMC is often referenced as exchange pair research by tokenholders or potential tokenholders of small- and medium-cap coins.