Bitfinex's Bitcoin Price Excluded from CoinMarketCap Average Calculation

Cryptocurrency data provider CoinMarketCap has excluded bitcoin prices provided by the troubled Bitfinex exchange from its weighted average calculation.

Of over $300 on Bitfinex as compared to other major exchanges.

On Coinbase and Gemini, the price is around $5,650, while on Bitfinex it is around $5,985.

"The price of any cryptocurrency is a volume weighted average of market pair prices for the cryptocurrency. Some prices are manually excluded from the average, denoted by an asterisk on the markets tab if the price does not seem indicative of a free market price; for example, when an exchange disables withdrawals or deposits, or regulatory conditions make it impossible for anyone else outside of a certain geographical region to buy coins. Some prices are also automatically excluded when our algorithms detect that the reported price is a significant outlier when compared to other market pairs for the same cryptocurrency, denoted by three asterisks on the markets tab."

The exclusion from CoinMarketCap's calculations comes as Bitfinex continues to be mired in controversy.

Bitfinex has now launched what's termed an initial exchange offering to raise as much as $1 billion.

Last January, Bitfinex and Tether were subpoenaed by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, although the regulator did not publicly state why.

CoinMarketCap previously changed the way it used data from Bitfinex in response to a report by CoinDesk that pointed out that a trading pair shown on CoinMarketCap - apparently for trades between the tether stablecoin and U.S. dollars - did not represent a pair available for trading on Bitfinex.

A new alliance last week, called the Data Accountability & Transparency Alliance, with Bitfinex and other exchanges on board, in order to tackle concerns over cryptocurrency data reporting.

Bitcoin and Bitfinex image via Shutterstock; Screenshots via CoinMarketCap and TradingView.