S&P Dow Jones Indices, the leading investment benchmark and indices provider, has launched “S&P Cryptocurrency Indices” with an ambitious goal of bringing transparency to the ever-evolving cryptocurrency market. These indices will measure the performance of certain cryptocurrencies that meet specific criteria – being listed on trusted exchanges with liquidity and market capitalization standards.
S&P had first announced last year that a cryptocurrency index will be coming, and since then, people have been waiting for this valuable traditional finance product.
The new indices will provide more reliable pricing from a trusted and authorized source, removing the need for referring to potentially suspicious cryptocurrency APIs that may not certainly deliver accurate pricing data.
This way, S&P aims to make accessing the cryptocurrency asset class data more straightforward, potentially increasing transparency in the speculative crypto market.
The company briefly announced the launch of its first three indices as part of its S&P Cryptocurrency Index Series, which includes:
- S&P Bitcoin Index: An index designed to track the performance of the biggest, most popular cryptocurrency Bitcoin.
- S&P Ethereum Index: An index aiming to track the performance of the second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap Ethereum.
- S&P Cryptocurrency MegaCap Index: An index intending to track the performance of the combination of both Bitcoin and Ethereum weighted by market cap.
As of now, all three indices are available on the S&P DJI website and investors can use them to gain exposure to the two of the most popular cryptocurrencies.
S&P will provide the price and other reference data from Lukka, Inc. via its “Lukka Prime and Lukka Reference Data” products. Lukka is a crypto asset software and data provider for institutions, backed by the parent of S&P DJI, S&P Global, Inc.
Currently, the company will provide end-of-day prices taken at 4:00 p.m. EST using the Lukka Prime Fair Market Value for cryptocurrency index calculation. But in the future, S&P plans to add more end-of-day index levels for other markets and regions as per demand.
In the announcement, S&P introduces its “Fair Market Value Pricing Methodology” that determines an asset’s value in points, not dollars. S&P spokesman Ray McConville explained in more details:
“Each index measures price appreciation, not the actual price. So comparing the two indices, we can see that Bitcoin YTD has grown 95.67% in value vs. ETH, which has grown 273.72% in value YTD. The actual index value isn’t so much as important as the change in that index value over time.”
