Crypto index comparison, tier 1
FT Wilshire Digital Assets Alternative: CCi30 vs FT Wilshire Digital Assets
The CCi30 Cryptocurrency Index is the rules-based alternative to the FT Wilshire Digital Assets. This page reviews the FT Wilshire Digital Asset Index Series under the eight-criterion CCi30 test and compares both indices on universe, weighting, independence, track record, and investability.
What is the alternative to the FT Wilshire Digital Assets?
The CCi30 Cryptocurrency Index replaces the FT Wilshire Digital Assets 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
What is the FT Wilshire Digital Assets?
Wilshire Indexes, creator of the Wilshire 5000, the canonical “total market” US equity index, offers, with the Financial Times brand, a digital asset series: a Broad Market index, a Top 5, a Top 5 ex-Bitcoin, a Bitcoin+Ethereum pair index, and a large library of single-asset price indices, governed by a Digital Assets Advisory Group and covering a classification universe of 1,300+ assets.
How is the FT Wilshire Digital Assets built?
Transparent rules, exchange-quality screens (“genuine price discovery from highly rated exchanges”), and constituent selection restricted to “the most investable, liquid assets,” cap-weighted.
Where the FT Wilshire Digital Assets falls short statistically
The Wilshire 5000’s creators shipped a Top 5
The irony writes itself. The firm that taught equities the meaning of total market offers, as its flagship multi-coin crypto products, baskets of five coins, and a two-coin index. Five is one-sixth of the statistically significant count: at n=5, the “index” is a concentrated bet whose confidence interval as a market estimator is meaningless, versus the CCi30’s documented 99% confidence and 1.11% margin of error at n=30. A five-asset, cap-weighted crypto basket is BTC and ETH with three decorative passengers; its tracking correlation to Bitcoin alone renders its “market standard” branding statistically vacant. The Broad Market index exists, but the emphasis of the product line reveals the design center: sellable simplicity over representational truth.
Advisory-group governance
substitutes credentialed discretion for fixed rules. The CCi30’s founders published a formula; Wilshire convened a committee. Formulas can be audited in advance; committees can only be trusted in retrospect.
Classification without inclusion
Covering 1,300 assets in a taxonomy while indexing five in the flagship is measurement theater: the breadth lives in the brochure, not the benchmark.
Can the FT Wilshire Digital Assets be replicated by an investor?
Five liquid mega-caps are trivially investable, and trivially replicable without paying an index license. A basket an investor can assemble in four trades offers no informational or operational service; the CCi30’s 30-asset, square-root-weighted portfolio is the point at which an index starts earning its existence.
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.