Crypto index comparison, tier 1
Nasdaq Crypto Index Alternative: CCi30 vs Nasdaq Crypto Index
The CCi30 Cryptocurrency Index is the rules-based alternative to the Nasdaq Crypto Index. This page reviews the Nasdaq Crypto Index (NCI) under the eight-criterion CCi30 test and compares both indices on universe, weighting, independence, track record, and investability.
What is the alternative to the Nasdaq Crypto Index?
The CCi30 Cryptocurrency Index replaces the Nasdaq Crypto Index 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 Nasdaq Crypto Index?
Launched in February 2021 with Brazilian asset manager Hashdex, the NCI is Nasdaq’s flagship crypto benchmark, designed, in Nasdaq’s own words, to be dynamic, broadly representative, and readily trackable. It now also underpins the Nasdaq CME Crypto Index offering distributed through CME Group, and serves as the benchmark for Hashdex ETFs.
How is the Nasdaq Crypto Index built?
The NCI’s defining feature is its investability screen: an asset qualifies only if it is supported by approved core exchanges and core custodians, institutionally acceptable, largely US-facing infrastructure. Within that filtered universe, weighting is by market capitalization, with periodic reconstitution.
Where the Nasdaq Crypto Index falls short statistically
A compliance filter marketed as a methodology
The NCI’s central innovation is to let custodians define the asset class. Whatever Coinbase Custody and its peers will hold is the index universe; whatever they won’t, privacy coins above all, does not exist.
This is the purest expression of the category error running through all Tier 1 indices: the confusion of what US institutions are permitted to touch with what the cryptocurrency market is. Monero’s exclusion is not a data problem; Monero has deep global liquidity. It is a policy decision, outsourced to custodians, and it means the NCI structurally understates exactly the property, censorship resistance, that gives cryptocurrency its economic meaning.
Circularity
Nasdaq sells listings and market services to the crypto industry; Hashdex sells funds benchmarked to the index it co-created. The benchmark is embedded in the product pipeline it is supposed to measure, a thermometer manufactured by the fever.
Cap-weighted concentration
Cap-weighted concentration, again: BTC plus ETH have persistently constituted the overwhelming majority of index weight, making the NCI’s “diverse pool of digital assets” a rounding error away from a two-coin portfolio. In July 2026 Investopedia reported the Nasdaq CME Crypto Index at a near 77% weighting in Bitcoin.
Can the Nasdaq Crypto Index be replicated by an investor?
Excellent, by construction, since the universe is defined by custodial availability. But note what this proves: investability constraints belong in the implementation of a portfolio, not in the definition of a market. The CCi30 keeps these layers separate, the index measures the market; the tracking portfolio handles execution. The NCI collapses them and thereby measures neither well.
Addendum: the Nasdaq CME Crypto Index
The index reviewed above is the parent methodology. Nasdaq and CME publish a co-branded variant of it, the Nasdaq CME Crypto Index, ticker NCI for the real-time level and NCIS for the daily settlement. It is calculated by CF Benchmarks Limited and governed by the Nasdaq Index Management Committee, so it inherits the eligibility architecture described above and adds a listed contract on top. CME has listed futures and micro futures against it since June 2026, which makes it the more commercially consequential of the two CME index launches, because unlike the CME CF pair it actually settles something.
Eight constituents, and two of them are the index
The index holds eight assets: bitcoin, ether, XRP, solana, cardano, stellar lumens, chainlink and bitcoin cash. Nasdaq published the weights as of 30 June 2026: bitcoin 78.67%, ether 10.93%, XRP 5.48%, solana 3.43%, cardano 0.47%, stellar lumens 0.41%, chainlink 0.37% and bitcoin cash 0.25%.
Bitcoin and ether together are 89.60% of the index. The bottom four constituents together are 1.50%. Nasdaq states plainly that no minimum or maximum caps are placed on constituents or weights, so free-float capitalisation weighting is left to run to its natural conclusion.
An investor holding this index holds bitcoin and ether with a 1.5% decorative fringe. The four smallest names cannot move the level. Whatever the eight-asset count is measuring, it is not breadth. The CCi30 answers the same question with thirty constituents and the square root of smoothed capitalisation, which is the transformation that stops the largest asset from becoming the index.
Quarterly is better, and the gate is the same
Reconstitution and rebalancing are quarterly, on the first business day of March, June, September and December. That is materially better than the semi-annual June and December cycle of the CME CF pair, and it is the one structural point on which this family outperforms its stablemate.
The universe is still bounded the same way. Nasdaq publishes separate Guidelines for Core Exchanges and Core Custodians, and eligibility runs through liquidity, exchange and custody standards. An asset that no vetted custodian will hold does not become eligible by growing. The objection raised against the parent index applies here unchanged: the screen is a compliance perimeter, and the index measures the perimeter.
What the record actually shows
Nasdaq gives the index launch date as 2 February 2021 and the back-test start date as 1 June 2020. Values between those two dates are back-tested, and Nasdaq labels them as indicative and provided for informational purposes only.
That is a real live record of more than five years, and it deserves to be said plainly: this family is not a launch-day index with no history, which is the charge that lands against the CME CF pair. The CCi30 has computed values under rules fixed in advance since 1 January 2015, roughly six years longer, and carries no back-tested day at all.
The futures are the point
NCIS settles at 16:00 New York time, with the closing level calculated at 16:05 and published on the Nasdaq Global Index Data Service. CME lists Nasdaq CME Crypto Index futures and micro futures against it, and Hashdex runs an ETF, HASH11, tracking the parent index.
This is what an index sponsor arrangement looks like when the instrument exists first and the benchmark serves it. It is a coherent product. It is also the reason the concentration matters more here than it would in a data-only benchmark: a contract that settles to a level which is 89.60% bitcoin and ether is a bitcoin and ether contract wearing the word index.
The separate CME CF Crypto Market Index and CME CF Emerging Crypto Index, launched on 31 August 2026 and administered by CF Benchmarks rather than Nasdaq, are reviewed in the CME CF Crypto Indices comparison. Constituent lists and weights change at each reconstitution and should be re-verified before citation.
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.
On the reported Bitcoin weighting: Investopedia, “There’s a new benchmark index for digital assets, and Bitcoin’s not in it” (Crystal Kim, 22 July 2026).