S&P Dow Jones Indices and Pantera Capital have launched an 18-asset crypto index that excludes Bitcoin and ranks eligible blockchain networks by the protocol income generated through the earlier two quarters.
Abstract
- S&P and Pantera launched an 18-asset crypto index based mostly on protocol income.
- Bitcoin and XRP didn’t qualify below the benchmark’s revenue-focused choice guidelines.
- Ether, BNB, Solana, TRON and Hyperliquid maintain the 5 largest positions.
In response to a joint announcement from the businesses, the S&P Pantera Digital Asset Index is designed to measure established community exercise as a substitute of relying solely on token costs or market capitalization. The benchmark might help funding merchandise, institutional allocations, and actively managed digital asset portfolios.
Bitcoin and XRP are the most important belongings from the S&P Cryptocurrency Broad Digital Asset Index that didn’t enter the new benchmark, S&P Dow Jones Indices wrote in an Indexology weblog put up. Their absence comes from the index’s income necessities slightly than their market worth, liquidity, or title recognition.
S&P Dow Jones Indices CEO Kathy Clay instructed CNBC that Bitcoin didn’t qualify as a result of it’s not a revenue-generating protocol below the index’s guidelines.
“Bitcoin will not be in there as a result of it’s actually not a type of revenue-generating protocols that we expect belongs on this index and meets all the standards.”
Not like smart-contract platforms, Bitcoin rewards miners with newly issued cash and transaction charges for securing its community. S&P’s methodology, nonetheless, focuses on income linked to exercise throughout protocols and purposes, which favors blockchains that acquire charges from transactions, buying and selling and different companies.
Clay instructed CNBC that S&P needed to use rules utilized in conventional fairness indexes to digital belongings by measuring elements that matter to skilled buyers. The strategy creates a benchmark centered on the financial exercise of blockchain networks slightly than the scale of their tokens alone.
Protocol income determines which crypto belongings qualify
Drawn from the S&P Cryptocurrency Broad Digital Asset Index, the eligible universe should first cross minimal necessities for protocol income, market capitalization and liquidity, in response to the businesses. Property that clear these screens are ranked by their complete protocol income throughout the 2 most up-to-date quarters.
Adjusted market capitalization then determines the burden of every qualifying asset. Beneath the index guidelines, the most important constituent can’t exceed 35%, whereas the opposite holdings are typically restricted to twenty%.
Quarterly rebalancing permits the benchmark so as to add, take away or resize constituents as their income, liquidity and market worth change. In consequence, an asset’s place will depend on continued community use in addition to its capacity to satisfy the index’s buying and selling necessities.
Ether, BNB, Solana, TRON and Hyperliquid’s HYPE token maintain the 5 largest positions at launch, in response to S&P’s Indexology put up. Every asset represents a community that collects income from transactions or purposes working via its infrastructure.
By comparability, many crypto benchmarks give Bitcoin their largest allocation as a result of they use market capitalization as the principle weighting measure. Bitcoin represented about 57% of the entire cryptocurrency market when the index was launched, in response to CoinGecko knowledge cited by Investopedia.
The Nasdaq CME Crypto Index assigned Bitcoin a weighting of practically 77%, whereas Ether held about 13%, Investopedia reported. The FTSE Digital Asset All Cap Index additionally positioned roughly 75% of its weight in Bitcoin, exhibiting how market-cap-based strategies can focus portfolios within the largest asset.
S&P’s new benchmark doesn’t take away market capitalization from the calculation utterly. As an alternative, the methodology makes use of income to determine which belongings qualify and how they rank earlier than adjusted market worth units their remaining weights.
Pantera Capital’s participation additionally connects the index with a crypto-focused funding supervisor that has backed blockchain tasks and digital belongings. Beneath the joint framework, S&P offers its index building and governance expertise whereas Pantera contributes information of blockchain networks and their financial fashions.
Fund suppliers are increasing multi-asset crypto publicity
The revenue-based index follows S&P Dow Jones Indices’ launch of the S&P Digital Markets 50 Index in October 2025. That benchmark combines 15 cryptocurrencies with 35 publicly traded firms concerned in digital asset infrastructure and companies, in response to S&P’s index description.
Hashdex has additionally expanded index-based crypto investing via the Nasdaq Crypto Index US ETF. The supervisor says the fund makes use of eligibility checks overlaying market measurement, liquidity, custody and U.S. regulatory necessities earlier than belongings can enter its benchmark.
Franklin Templeton entered the category in February 2025 with its Franklin Crypto Index ETF, or EZPZ. At launch, the fund tracked Bitcoin and Ether via the CF Institutional Digital Asset Index, in response to the agency’s launch announcement.
Franklin later expanded the fund’s underlying index to incorporate XRP, Solana, Dogecoin, Cardano, Stellar and Chainlink alongside Bitcoin and Ether, in response to the supervisor’s present product data. The additions present how rules-based crypto funds can change their holdings when extra belongings meet regulatory and funding necessities.
MarketVector Indexes and Coinbase Asset Administration took one other route in April by introducing the Coinbase Retailer of Worth Index. Their benchmark combines Bitcoin with tokenized gold and applies inverse-volatility weighting, giving much less weight to the asset exhibiting increased worth swings.
Bitwise chief funding officer Matt Hougan predicted in December that crypto index funds would change into vital throughout 2026 as a result of the market was rising extra complicated and its use circumstances have been multiplying. In a Bitwise funding memo, Hougan argued that diversified funds might assist buyers acquire publicity with out having to establish each eventual winner.
The S&P Pantera index applies that diversification thought to revenue-producing networks, leaving the market’s largest cryptocurrency exterior the benchmark whereas giving main positions to blockchains with measurable payment exercise.
