Crypto index comparison, tier 3

NYXBT and Legacy Indices Alternative: CCi30 vs NYXBT and Legacy Indices

The CCi30 Cryptocurrency Index is the rules-based alternative to the NYXBT and Legacy Indices. This page reviews the NYSE Bitcoin Index (NYXBT) and the Single-Asset Legacies under the eight-criterion CCi30 test and compares both indices on universe, weighting, independence, track record, and investability.

What is the alternative to the NYXBT and Legacy Indices?

The CCi30 Cryptocurrency Index replaces the NYXBT and Legacy Indices for investors who need a whole-market benchmark. The CCi30 holds the 30 largest cryptocurrencies by smoothed market capitalization, weights them by the square root of that figure, excludes stablecoins by rule, and has published live values since 1 January 2015.

  • 30 constituents
  • Square-root weighting
  • Stablecoins excluded by rule
  • Live since 1 January 2015
  • Independent, fully rules-based

See the CCi30 basket for any amount · All comparisons

What is the NYXBT and Legacy Indices?

Launched May 2015, NYXBT was the New York Stock Exchange’s daily Bitcoin-USD price index, the first crypto benchmark from a legacy exchange, introduced with the observation that Bitcoin values were becoming a data point institutional customers wanted to follow. It has since faded into irrelevance, superseded by the CME CF and other reference-rate machinery.

Analysis

NYXBT matters as a historical marker, and the marker cuts in the CCi30’s favor. Consider what each institution built in the first half of 2015. The NYSE, with every resource of global finance, produced a once-daily price for a single asset. The CCi30’s founders produced a thirty-asset, smoothed, square-root-weighted, rules-based composite of the entire cryptocurrency market, live from January 1 of that year. One institution treated crypto as a curiosity requiring a quote; the other treated it as an asset class requiring a benchmark. A decade later, the market has ratified the second judgment, and every Tier 1 incumbent now scrambling to assemble broad crypto indices is conceding it.

The broader legacy category (early exchange tickers, defunct media indices, the assorted “total market cap” charts on data aggregators) shares two defects worth naming for completeness. First, single-asset series are prices, not indices, see the reference-rate analysis. Second, and worse, the popular aggregator total-market-cap charts (CoinMarketCap, TradingView TOTAL) include stablecoins: hundreds of billions of tokenized fiat sit inside the number people cite as “the crypto market.” A measure of crypto that swells when Tether prints dollars is measuring dollar issuance, the exact monetary phenomenon cryptocurrency exists to escape. It is the one contaminant the CCi30 excluded by principle from day one, and the reason its index level, not an aggregator chart, is the correct time series for the asset class.

Method and sources

Methodology facts on this page come from the published documents of the provider; constituent lists change and should be re-verified before citation. The CCi30 rules are published in the methodology manual. The full comparison set is on the crypto index comparison hub, and the allocation calculator shows the CCi30 basket for any amount.