What is CoinGecko? An Official Beginner's Guide to CoinGecko

There’s a ton of things you can do and achieve with CoinGecko, the leading independent Crypto Data Aggregator loved by the crypto community.

• Goal: Learn about key features of CoinGecko & understand why millions of users use it everyday!

  1. CoinGecko.com

  2. Coin page

  3. More ways to explore coins

  4. Candy & Portfolio Tracker

  5. Learning resources

• Skill: Beginner

• Effort: 10-15 minutes

• Quiz: Do you know which coin has the largest price gain in the past 1 year? Hint: on 31 Dec 2021, this coin price has increased by more than 50,000,000% !  The answer is within this article, go find out now!

TL;DR Summary:

1. If you haven’t, create a free CoinGecko account now!

2. Discover coins via:

   1. Trending Coins (through search bar, or bottom of the page)

   2. Categories (some really hot ones like Metaverse, GameFi, DAO Governance, and chain ecosystems)

   3. Recently Added, Large Movers, and more..

3. Look for useful data on the Coin page:

   1. Fundamental information, official websites and social media

   2. Price chart, price changes

   3. Where to buy the coin (centralized and decentralized exchanges). 

4. Start adding coins that interest you into the portfolio, so that you can keep track of them in a watchlist. You may create multiple portfolios for different purposes too. Then,

   1. Add transactions to record your investment.

   2. Or add fake transactions in a test portfolio account.  

5. Save price alerts for coins that you think could be a good trade entry or sales position. 

6. Last but not least, collect free Candy on a daily basis, and redeem rewards like ebook, NFTs, discounts and more!

7. Download our best-in-class Android and iOS app to elevate your CoinGecko experience!

1. Let’s begin with CoinGecko.com

Note: if you’re new to DeFi (Decentralized Finance) and NFT, you definitely wanna grab a copy of our best-selling ‘How To DeFi’ and ‘How To NFT’ ebooks to level up! You can get our ebook for free too, more on this later.

The homepage is our most popular page where millions of monthly users visit to view the latest price of the top 100 cryptocurrencies by market cap. If you’re wondering why the price here is different from other crypto exchanges, it is because CoinGecko tracks the price from different exchanges to provide a global average price. 

Crypto exchanges show different prices and sometimes provide very inaccurate odd prices. Hence, the crypto communities love relying on CoinGecko to get the most accurate and unbiased crypto price! To learn more about our methodologies, visit our page here.

Glossary:

• Market Capitalization (Mkt Cap): the total value of a cryptocurrency. Market Cap = Current Price x Circulating Supply

  • Crypto investors generally use the market cap to determine the valuation of a crypto coin. It is also a common practice to compare the market cap of two similar coins to determine the potential growth of a smaller coin.

  • Tips: use our Compare tool to help you compare market data for different coins. Here’s an example for comparing the Market Cap of a few Layer 1 coins under the Smart Contract Platforms category. All else being equal, one might say that a coin with a lower market cap has more room to grow when compared to another coin with a higher market cap. 

• 24h Volume: the measure of a cryptocurrency trading volume across all tracked exchanges in the last 24 hours.

We will cover more glossaries in the next section!

Pro Tips: By default, the crypto price table is sorted based on the descending order of market cap value. Pro geckos love to sort between 1h, 24h, 7d price changes, to observe which of the top 100 coins experienced the largest gain or loss recently. Users may do the same for coins in different market cap ranges. 

When you try to sort the table, it will only sort the Coins that are available on that particular page. Take this as an example: if you’re on Page 2, no matter which column you click to sort order, you will only see Coins that are ranked between 101st - 200th market cap, and will not see large-cap coins like Bitcoin and Ethereum. This is a feature enjoyed by the Pros to identify ‘low cap gems’ that hiked or dipped (read: discount) in price recently. 

The tips above are also applicable to other tables on the CoinGecko site, such as Categories as a whole, or for coins within a specific category page like Metaverse.

Still unsure where to begin? The Search Bar could be your best friend to identify the most trending coins now:

Or simply scroll to the bottom, and see how the trending coins have been performing in the past week:

2. Coin pages

The coin page is where you get all the information you need to research a crypto project, below we will split them into 2 parts - the upper and lower part.

2.1 Upper part:

On the left, you can see the Price and market data like Market Cap, Circulating Supply, 24 Hour Trading Volume. 

Note: the information above is also available via tooltip on the Coin page. 

Pro Tips: Pro geckos sometimes compare the ratios listed above between 2 or more coins, to determine which coin is relatively under- or over-valued

How can I use the supply information?

The Circulating/Max supply ratio may allow us to get a quick idea of whether a coin will undergo high inflation later. If a coin’s Circulating Supply number is very close to its Max Supply, the coin may have limited emission (from locked to Circulating Supply), and less exposure to sales pressure (when large holders sell their locked & vested coins for profit). It is vital to look at the tokenomics of a project, to learn whether it is more VC/owner oriented or community oriented, as well as its vesting/unlock schedule - when the locked coins by early investors will be released into circulating supply (open up for public trades). 

Why is certain data not available on a Coin page?

You may not be able to view certain information like Total Value Locked (TVL), because these are only applicable to DeFi protocols like DEX (decentralized exchanges), yield farming, and lending protocols.

If you’re wondering why some coins do not have market capitalization data, this is because such information is left blank by default, and will only be approved for display once our team has conducted certain due diligence.

If you have more questions about the data, feel free to take a look at our Methodologies, FAQ, and Help Center page.

The right side contains useful links for the coin project: 

• Official websites - usually the main source where you can learn more about the project, such as their roadmap, tokenomics, team, official social links, documentation, and more. 

• Social media links - you should visit their Twitter, Discord, Telegram, and Reddit to learn more about the project team and their community, and gauge whether this is a community you’d like to be a part of! Feel free to drop all your questions there.

• Blockchain explorer*

• Contract* - 1 click access to add a token contract into your MetaMask wallet. 

• Category tags – this is where you can easily find other similar coins that fall under the same category. 

*But Sir? If you don’t know what a MetaMask contract is, and are not familiar with DeFi, fret not! Our team authored the first & best-selling ‘How To DeFi’ books for beginners like you! https://landing.coingecko.com/how-to-defi/  ← you can get this eBook by signing up for an account and claiming it through Candy Rewards! More on this below.

Some key actions that you can do here:

(A) Save Price Alert for a coin to notify you with a web browser or mobile app notifications by clicking on the Bell icon. Pro geckos use this to alert them for key metrics such as liquidation thresholds.

(B) Add a coin into Portfolio by clicking the Star button, so that you can keep track of all the coins in one place. Tips: you may create multiple portfolios for different purposes, such as general watchlist, long-term hodl investment, memecoin, or ROI simulation (with fake transactions). 

2.2 Lower Part:

Here are some tabs that you find above the chart:

1. Markets: Full list of exchanges that trade the coin
2. Chart: View the Price chart in expanded view
3. Historical Data: View and export historical price data
4. Social: Metrics on social media users and followers
5. Security: Security audit, review, bugs bounty, and insurance coverage
6. Developer: Developer activity
7. Widgets: Token price widgets to embed on your site

There is also the option to convert the token to the currenncy of your choice on the right, along with additional historical data about the coin, such as its all-time high and low.

You may switch between different dates on the price chart to view the price movements over specific tiome frames.

Beneath the chart is a very handy table to let you know how the coin price performed in the past 1 hour, 24 hours, and up to 1 year. ← another Gecko’s screenshot favourite!

Why show BTC and ETH on the price chart? 

Some pro geckos love to compare a coin’s price movement against BTC and ETH, with many experienced traders moving their holdings between BTC, ETH, and altcoins to adjust their trading strategy across different market cycles. 

Example below: by plotting ETH (red line) on the chart, it helps users to understand whether UNI coin performed better or worse than ETH in the past 1 year. The red line (UNI price, denominated in ETH) is constantly higher than the blue line (UNI price in USD), indicating that UNI is maintaining greater price growth performance than ETH during this period.

Below you will be able to find out: which exchange allows you to trade the coin, at what price point, and which market pair (e.g. UNI/USDT = buy UNI with USDT) is available.  

Pro Tips: pro geckos sometimes use this section to check whether a coin is listed on major exchanges like Binance. If not, the coin may have a high growth potential to be adopted by more traders later. On the flip side, it is also common for a coin to experience high sales pressure (and the price goes down) after being listed on a famous exchange.

At the bottom, you will find relevant news and guides.

3. Looking for ways to explore more coins? Here’s what you can do:

3.1 Categories

Find out the full list of coins under certain hot categories like metaverse, NFT, GameFi, and more! You may save your favourite category with our Custom Tab feature too.

3.2 Large Movers

View the largest price gainers and losers in recent, or up to 1 year ago!

Quiz & Answer: do you know how much Shiba Inu's price has gone up in the past 365 days? It’s 59180218.7% (on 27 Dec 2021)

3.3 Recently Added

The latest coins listed on CoinGecko! Hidden low cap gem? 

3.4 Discover more coins under our Watchlists page.

If you’re interested to know which Coins are currently trending in certain countries like the United States and the Philippines, you can find out via the Trending Crypto page.

3.5 Exchanges

If you’re already using a (centralized or decentralized) crypto exchange or are considering using a new exchange, you can find out which coins are available for trading there, its liquidity and trust score. 

Now, CoinGecko's crypto exchanges page includes a column dedicated to the exchange's Reserve Data, where you can see exchanges labeled as Available or Unavailable. 

Available means that certain reserve information is available for users to perform due diligence around the exchange's reserve.

Unavailable means that the reserve information is not available on CoinGecko.

For exchanges with Available data, you can click to enter the exchange's page, where you will see the option to look into their Exchange Reserves. This section features exchange reserve data sourced by the CoinGecko team, which is aggregated from sources including Nansen and DeFiLlama, as well as the exchanges themselves if they have published records of their reserves.

CoinGecko recognizes Proof of Reserves as an important data point for transparency, but it is not currently linked to the Trust Score as it is a fairly new priority item for many exchanges, and it could be unfair methodology to penalize exchanges for not having one at this point in time. 

CoinGecko's plan is to find a good representation where Proof of Reserves can be applied to the exchange's Trust Score, so that only exchanges that have attempted to prove solvency will score well. 

Pro Tips: If a user is undecided between 2 exchanges to trade a coin, pro geckos would go with the one with higher liquidity or trust score, and reserve data.

4. Candy Rewards & Portfolio Tracker - why should you sign up for a free CoinGecko account?

While anyone can access all the price and market data on our website, here are some benefits that geckos love by signing a FREE account with us.

4.1 Claim free Candy for rewards

Sign up for your free account now before missing out on more free candies & rewards like ebooks, NFTs, discounts, and more!

Tips: by collecting 800 candies (hint: you can get 310 candies/week by collecting it daily), you can get yourself a free How To DeFi (Beginner) ebook that is worth $19.99+ on Amazon. You can also get discount vouchers for products like SafePal cold wallets, or VPN providers.

4.2 Track P/L or coin research with Portfolio

Other than using it to record your actual investment across centralized exchanges and DeFi, you may also use the portfolio as your Watchlist. That being said, you don’t have to put in real money to start your crypto investment learning & research journey!  Some users add ‘virtual’ transactions to simulate potential Profit and Loss on certain coins. 

Tips: you can create multiple portfolios for different purposes! And don’t forget to sync your portfolio and price alert across the web and mobile app.

5. Wanna improve your crypto knowledge? 

Here’s what you can do:

1. Subscribe to our daily newsletter, and join over 100,000s Geckos! 

2. Learn from our crypto guides and analysis on CoinGecko Learn.

3. Read our quarterly report to learn about recent trends.

4. Read the latest news on our site. may do so with our Mobile App too!

5. Join our Premium plan to be in the same group chat with our in-house analysts. 

6. Follow us on Twitter, Telegram, Discord, Instagram, and Youtube.

7. Gain insights from industry leaders through CoinGecko Podcast.

8. We wanna learn from you too, if you have any feedback to improve CoinGecko products, just leave us a message here. 

Congratulations on finishing this guide, WAGMI! 

Need a quick summary and can’t wait to try these out? We’ve got you covered, please refer to the TL,DR checklist at the top of this article. 

Is this the best 10 minutes you spent to kickstart your crypto journey? RT @coingecko on Twitter to let us know! 

When one shares, everyone wins. Share with those who need a read of this too!

Till then, see you on the moon, I mean.. cryptoverse..

If you find this article helpful, do check out our video guide on how to use CoinGecko App like a pro!

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CoinGecko's editorial team comprises writers, editors, research analysts and cryptocurrency industry experts. We produce and update our articles regularly to provide the most complete, accurate and helpful information on all things cryptocurrencies. Follow the author on Twitter @coingecko