S&P Dow Jones Indices on Tuesday rolled out five new cryptocurrency index products, the first major expansion of its digital assets benchmarking tools since entering the market in May.
Headlining the tranche is a âbroad digital market,â or BDM, index that includes over 240 coins, a press release said. âThe new subindices also provide different slices and dices of the BDM by market cap so that investors can track different segments of the market,â an S&P spokesperson told CoinDesk.
Itâs not exactly clear from which assets BDM and its subsets build their market âsnapshot.â Â
S&Pâs website said the âindex is meant to reflect a broad investable universe.â S&Pâs crypto data partner Lukka did not immediately respond to CoinDesk. HXRO is the 240th-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, according to CoinGecko, though itâs unclear if S&Pâs selection criteria is based on size.
The productsâ âsnapshotâ perspective signals Wall Streetâs desire to tame the Wild West-esque crypto markets into a more digestible form. Like S&Pâs first three crypto indices, these newcomers use points, not prices in showing market performance.Â
S&P spokesman Ray McConville previously told CoinDesk that this methodology better conveys asset appreciation over time. A July 2021 methodology document describes S&Pâs mathematical process for calculating index points.
The new indexes are as follows: Broad Digital Market, Crypto LargeCap, BDM Ex-MegaCap (BDM without bitcoin and ether), BDM Ex-LargeCap (BDM without the Large Caps) and Crypto LargeCap Ex-MegaCap.
Peter Roffman, the innovation head for S&P Dow Jones Indices, hinted in a press statement that more crypto market indices are in the works.
âWe look forward to further expanding our new family of Digital Market Indices and bringing much needed transparency to this exciting market,â Roffman said.