Nasdaq’s Listing of XRP Ripple Liquid Index in Final Stages, Bitcoin and Ethereum Indices Live
Nasdaq, the world’s second-largest stock exchange with a market capitalization of over $10 trillion, is in the final stages of launching its XRP “Ripple Liquid Index” (RLX) and has successfully launched Bitcoin and Ethereum Liquidity Indices (BLX and ELX) as of Feb. 25th.
At present, Nasdaq supports over 4,000 global indices and it recently partnered with Brave New Coin (BNC), the company that helped develop the BLX and ELX indices. Notably, BNC is also planning to launch an XRP liquid index, which will allow investors to track the real-time price of the token.
As mentioned on BNC’s official website:
“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.”
BNC’s blog post regarding the announcement also noted that “efforts are still underway by several vendors” to launch the first Bitcoin ETF in US markets.
As further explained on BNC’s website, the company’s proprietary ‘Liquid Index’ (LX) indices use a combination of qualitative and quantitative data in order to “factor in the stability and quality of constituency.” Additionally, BNC’s LX indices take into account an asset’s “volume, book depth, tick size” and several other factors provided by “qualified market participants.” This information is reportedly used to “calculate a fair global value” for the price of bitcoin (BTC), ether (ETH), and other listed assets. BNC has programmed its indices to update prices “every 30 seconds” in USD.
According to the crypto-related financial data firm, its methodology is designed to promote the “transparency of price [for] crypto assets.” Notably, the lack of transparency, or clarity, regarding what financial products aim to provide has “prevented regulators” from approving many different cryptocurrency-based “retail products,” BNC’s announcement mentioned.
Currently, BNC is in its “final stages” of developing the RLX (Ripple Liquid Index) and the company is reportedly “working with a range of market participants” to launch various other “custom basket indices.”
On February 25th, XRP was officially listed on Coinbase Pro with three different pairs: XRP/USD, XRP/EUR, and XRP/BTC. According to BNC, the XRP listing is considered by many “as a form of institutional endorsement for the asset” as Coinbase Pro (a platform for professional and experienced traders) is “a leading global exchange… [that] serves high-end” clients.
Commenting on the launch of the Bitcoin and Ethereum indices on Nasdaq, Fran Strajnar, the CEO of BNC, remarked:
“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.”