"5000 hits to our API per minute" does not say anything about whether they're measuring in front of or behind the cache. For all intents and purposes, the cache's endpoint is the API endpoint.

And uncached hits only would be an even more worthless metric.

I, too, think either that number is wrong or this wasn't a feature available to all users.

I also agree that using this metric as affirmation the feature is liked is dangerous; count me among the many here inadvertantly contributing without enjoying the feature.