Nomics
DefunctMinneapolis, US · Founded 2017 · 2 known investors
Nomics was a Minneapolis-based cryptoasset market-data company and API provider that shut down in April 2023.
Also known as Nomics.com
Founders & leadership
Nomics was founded in 2017 by Clay Collins and Nick Gauthier.
Investors · 2
Also in the syndicate · 1
Reported raises · per SEC filings
Form D private placements▶Undisclosed amountofferedAug 2018 · Other TechnologyRule 506(c)
- Clay CollinsExecutive Officer, Director
- Nick GauthierExecutive Officer, Director
- Incorporated
- Limited Liability Company, Delaware, 2017
- Federal exemptions
- 06c
Source: SEC EDGAR Form D. Amounts as filed; amended filings shown once at their latest values.
Company profile
researched Aug 2026Nomics was a cryptocurrency market-data company founded in 2017 by Clay Collins, co-founder and former CEO of Leadpages, and Massachusetts-based developer Nick Gauthier. The company described its ambition as becoming the "Yahoo Finance for cryptocurrencies," building two connected products: a free consumer-facing website for cryptoasset prices, portfolio tracking, project information and price alerts, and a paid back-end API that served the same data to professional users.
The data set covered prices, market caps, volumes, OHLCV candles, exchange listings, individual trades and order books across cryptocurrency exchanges. Rather than ingesting exchange-published candlestick data as competitors did, Nomics collected raw trade data and constructed its own candles to keep methodology consistent across venues. API endpoints included /currencies/ticker, /currencies, /candles, /markets, /exchanges, /global-ticker, /volume/history, /market-cap/history and /exchange-rates, with authentication via an API key passed as a query parameter and quote-currency selection via a convert parameter.
Nomics positioned itself on data breadth and integrity, claiming to be "first to list" new tokens and to index more assets than CoinMarketCap and CoinGecko combined, and committing to never accept payment for listings, ratings or badges. Collins publicly criticized rival aggregators, particularly CoinMarketCap, over scam advertising and manipulable rankings. The company sunset its website and API on April 3-4, 2023 without stating a reason.
Founding story
Clay Collins, who co-founded the Minneapolis landing-page company Leadpages, began participating in cryptocurrency markets around early 2014, buying assets and joining crowd sales and pre-sales. He was introduced to Massachusetts-based developer Nick Gauthier by one of the co-founders of Drip, a product Leadpages had acquired. After leaving Leadpages, Collins discussed with Gauthier the absence of a solid aggregator for cryptocurrency data, and the two co-founded Nomics; Collins announced the new venture 57 days after departing his first startup, describing the launch as something he "accidentally" started. The distributed founding team worked remotely using Voxer for asynchronous voice messages and Basecamp for project management, prioritizing data ingestion and storage before front-end work.
Business model
Nomics operated a freemium split between a free public price-tracking website, which Collins said the company did not intend to monetize and instead used to build traffic in the category, and a paid API product sold to professional and institutional users. The company stated it did not accept payment in exchange for listings, ratings or badges.
Revenue came from paid API subscriptions sold to hedge funds, institutional investors and exchanges, with deeper historical candle data offered as a paid feature.
Traction
As of December 2018, Nomics indexed over 3.5 billion data points and served more than 35 million API requests per month, and stated that some of the largest industry players were both customers and investors. Following the Series A the company aimed to extend its index to cover 95 percent of the lifetime of activity in the cryptocurrency market, including delisted tokens and defunct exchanges.
Latest developments
Nomics ceased operations on April 3-4, 2023, posting a notice that the website was being sunset effective immediately and disabling the API the same day; no reason, acquirer or migration path was provided. LinkedIn indicated much of the team, including co-founder Nick Gauthier, had left in February 2023. Third-party aggregators subsequently published migration guides and alternative recommendations for former Nomics API users.
▸Full profile — market position, technology, go-to-market, geography, history, risks & controversies
Market position
Nomics was one of the better-known cryptoasset data aggregators and a favorite source for investors and enthusiasts seeking trading data and real-time prices, but as of late 2018 it was not the market leader on breadth of coverage; Collins argued its differentiation was depth on individual cryptoassets. The company later claimed the world's largest cryptoassets index, larger than CoinMarketCap and CoinGecko combined, and was seen by some observers as a leading aggregation platform before its shutdown.
Differentiation rested on constructing candles from raw trade data instead of relying on exchange-supplied candlesticks, on depth of per-asset history including archived data from defunct exchanges and dead tokens, on being early to list new tokens, and on a "trustless transparency" stance that refused paid listings, ratings or badges.
Technology
Nomics ingested raw trade-level data rather than exchange-generated candlesticks and computed its own OHLCV candles to maintain a consistent methodology across exchanges that could otherwise change their candle calculations. Plans described logging every order across major cryptoexchanges as well as order books, including unfilled orders. The product was delivered as a REST API (api.nomics.com) with a query-parameter API key, symbol-style asset identifiers such as BTC, and separate endpoints for tickers, currency metadata, candles, markets, exchanges, global market data and exchange rates.
Go-to-market
The free consumer site was used to capture traffic and awareness in the cryptocurrency data category while the API was sold to institutional customers; the company also pursued visibility through founder interviews, public criticism of competing aggregators, and marketing campaigns described by industry press as among the more innovative in crypto.
Hedge funds, family offices, day traders, institutional investors, exchanges and engineering teams needing programmatic data, alongside retail investors, analysts and enthusiasts using the free website.
Geography
Headquarters split between Minneapolis, Minnesota and Boston, Massachusetts, with a distributed team that as of December 2018 included staff in Minneapolis, Boston, Michigan and the Czech Republic.
History
Nomics was founded in 2017 and publicly discussed by Collins in September 2017, when he projected making the API available to hedge funds and institutional investors around February or March of the following year. In December 2018 the company closed a $3 million Series A. At that point it split its headquarters between Minneapolis and Boston, employed Collins plus five full-time staff located in Minneapolis, Boston, Michigan and the Czech Republic, and planned two to three additional hires over the next year. On April 3-4, 2023, after nearly five years of operation, Nomics replaced its website with a short sunset notice thanking users and shut down its API the same day, without an announced reason, acquisition or migration path for API customers.
Risks & controversies
The company shut down abruptly and without warning or explanation, leaving API customers with failing integrations and no migration path; commentators attributed the closure variously to intense competition in crypto data or to monetization difficulties, though the company itself gave no reason. Collins was publicly outspoken against rival aggregators, alleging scam advertising and ranking manipulation at CoinMarketCap.
Compiled by commissioned research from 8 cited public sources — announcements, filings, and press listed under research sources below.
Key figures
latest reportedCompany-reported or press-reported figures, each dated to when it was claimed — not independently audited.
Timeline · 3
launches, deals, and filingsNomics replaced nomics.com with a one-line notice stating the website was being sunset effective immediately and pulled its API (api.nomics.com) the same day. No reason was given, there was no acquisition, and no migration path was offered to API customers. Reports date the closure to April 3-4, 2023, after nearly five years of operation.
According to LinkedIn data cited by CoinSnacks, much of the Nomics team, including co-founder Nick Gauthier, ended their tenure at the company in February 2023, roughly two months before the shutdown.
Nomics announced the closing of a $3 million Series A round led by Arthur Ventures, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, CoVenture Crypto, Digital Currency Group and BitGo co-founder Ben Davenport. Proceeds were earmarked for expanding exchange data coverage and hiring two to three employees over the following year.
$3M source ↗
Dated company events from announcements, filings, and press; legal rows summarize public dockets and regulator releases.
▸Research sources · 8
primary sources listed
- NomicsNotes from NumberNomics | Economics. Explained.numbernomics.com · web
8 public sources were cited for this profile; the first-party ones are listed here.
Frequently asked questions
- What does Nomics do?
- Nomics was a Minneapolis-based cryptoasset market-data company and API provider that shut down in April 2023.
- Who founded Nomics?
- Nomics was founded by Clay Collins, Nick Gauthier in 2017.
- Who are Nomics's investors?
- Nomics's investors include Coinbase Ventures.
- Where is Nomics headquartered?
- Nomics is headquartered in Minneapolis, US.