Nasdaq and CME Partner on Crypto Index Featuring BTC, ETH, and LINK

• Nasdaq has announced a new partnership with the CME to rebrand its market-leading index as the Nasdaq CME Crypto Index.
• The index tracks Bitcoin and Ethereum as the main assets, with a rotating set of large-cap cryptos such as Solana, Chainlink, Cardano, and Polkadot.

Nasdaq and the CME Group are partnering to launch a new crypto market index that tracks some of the leading large-cap cryptos, targeting institutional investors.

Known as the Nasdaq CME Crypto Index (NCI), it’s a rebrand and expansion of Nasdaq’s existing index, launched in February 2021, which professional investors have relied on to track the market performance. The two TradFi giants say the index introduces transparency, governance, and trusted benchmarks to a sector that’s increasingly gaining mainstream appeal.

The new product is “the combination of two gold standards to deliver the regulated diversification and foundational building block the market now demands,” commented CME’s Giovanni Vicioso, who heads the Equity and Alternative Products division at the Chicago-based company.

The index tracks large-cap tokens, with Bitcoin and Ethereum as permanent constituents, and rotating others such as LINK, XLM, LTC, BCH, SOL, ADA, and DOT. Each token is weighted based on its market cap, liquidity, and other factors such as custody and its trading venues. Nasdaq then presents the weighted performance to represent the wider market, much like the S&P in the stock market.

Nasdaq, CME Target Institutional Investors

The NCI index primarily targets institutional investors, who are fast becoming critical to the performance of the overall digital asset market. Every major crypto project is now targeting Wall Street. Ethereum launched the Ethereum for Institutions last October; XRPL is partnering with infrastructure providers to target this sector; Cardano’s Midnight’s main pitch is institutional privacy; Chainlink now anchors the $16 trillion institutional on-chain finance, and more.

According to Sean Wasserman, the head of product management at Nasdaq, this institutional flow is only going to rise this year. He stated:

Bitcoin remains the most popular asset with these professional investors. The top crypto trades at $90,640 at press time, trading sideways for the past day. A notable spike to $91,800 was short-lived, and as trading volume dips over the weekend, analysts expect price movement to remain minimal.

Professional investors are gradually expanding beyond Bitcoin as others like Solana and XRP gain regulatory clarity, deepen their liquidity, and expand their ecosystems and trading venues. As Wasserman observed: