Nasdaq listing of BNC’s Bitcoin and Ethereum liquidity indices goes live

A week after the first major crypto announcement of 2019, Nasdaq today started its listing of Brave New Coin’s BLX and ELX indices for Bitcoin and Ethereum.

This institutional endorsement is what investors have been waiting for as Nasdaq has plans to launch a bitcoin futures market alongside Intercontinental Exchange’s (ICE) Bakkt futures market which was due to launch on its platform on January 23 but has since been pushed back to an undetermined date in Q2 2019. Efforts are still underway by several vendors to bring the first bitcoin or ethereum ETF to the US market.

BNC’s ‘Liquid Index’ (LX) indices are part qualitative and part quantitative, factoring in the stability and quality of constituency as well as the volume, book depth, tick size and other factors from the qualified market participants, to calculate a fair global value for the price of Bitcoin and Ethereum, expressed in USD, every 30 seconds. The methodology adds to the transparency of pricing crypto assets, a concern that has prevented regulators in approving retail products.

BNC is in the final stages of producing the RLX (Ripple Liquid Index) and is working with a range of market participants to create custom basket indices. XRP was today listed on Coinbase Pro, which many view as a form of institutional endorsement for the asset as Coinbase Pro is a leading global exchange that serves high-end traders and investors.

“The LX program was born out of a need for clear and transparent price discovery of liquid cryptographic assets and is a bigger need today then it was back in 2015 when we started this program”, said Fran Strajnar, CEO of BNC.

XRP got the renowned "Coinbase pump" on news of the listing which brought it up to $0.33c from $0.30c.

Currently Coinbase Pro isn’t part of the constituents of the global price of XRP but given enough trading volume on the exchange it could become part of the RLX.

The ‘LX’ family of BNC indices has had its methodology independently audited against key IOSCO (International Organisation of Securities Commissions) principles says Strajnar. "BNC endorses the IOSCO principles and fully embraces the IOSCO’s goals of addressing the obvious conflicts of interest in the benchmark-setting process, which the nascent crypto industry is vulnerable to."

“The crypto derivative wave is inevitable. Once custody was solved, first with Fidelity’s announcements last November, and now with indices that align with IOSCO principles being available through the Nasdaq, there’s going to be a rush to produce all manner of financial instruments, which the institutional users have been asking for, for almost 3 years now”, added Strajnar.

“We are in talks with a range of market participants and hope to be able to share further developments on this front very soon”.