A few days ago, Coinmarketcap made a strange move and excluded the most prominent South Korean exchanges from their price calculation algorithm. It is well known for a while that in South Korea the price of crypto currencies is significantly higher than in other areas, sometimes up with 50%.
This move had two consequences:
- first, tokens which happened to be traded in South Korea too appeared to be diving, because the higher prices were excluded from the calculations
- second, a short wave of panic sell ensued, as a result of this perceived dip
But, as I looked at the prices of Bitcoin this evening, I realized that not only South Korean exchanges were excluded, but also some prominent Japanese exchanges, some of them with significant volume (more than $400 million). All this while other "bombs", like Poloniex Siacoin/BTC pair, with a $20k price for Bitcoin on a meager $13 million volume, were included.
According to the notes on Coinmarketcap, the Japanese exchanges were excluded because they have no trading fees (as you can see, two Japanese exchanges, in which apparently there are trading fees, are included).
While it's true that in exchanges with no trading fees, wash trades (trades in which a buyer sells to and buys from himself) are more common, I don't think this is a reason to exclude them from the price calculations.
Maybe somebody should tell to the guys at CMC that there are entire token ecosystems where there are no transaction fees at all. Like, for instance, STEEM.
Are those entire markets manipulated?
I'm a serial entrepreneur, blogger and ultrarunner. You can find me mainly on my blog at Dragos Roua where I write about productivity, business, relationships and running. Here on Steemit you may stay updated by following me 
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