Nasdaq, Inc., the owner-operators of the second-largest stock market in the world in the NASDAQ stock market, has come calling for cryptocurrency data, and cryptocurrency tracker site CryptoCompare has the major corporation covered.
That’s per a Tuesday press release from CryptoCompare, which declared the site had partnered with Nasdaq — which also operates numerous other large platforms like the Stockholm Stock Exchange, the Helsinki Stock Exchange, and the Copenhagen’s Stock Exchange — to create a new product for valuing cryptocurrencies.
That product, the Nasdaq/CryptoCompare Aggregate Crypto Reference Prices tracker, is coming to Quandl, a platform designed by its creators to be a “premier source for financial, economic and alternative datasets.”
Billed as a means for helping institutions delve deeper into the cryptoeconomy, the real-time tracker product is a definite step forward toward mainstream adoption for the top digital assets:
“The Nasdaq/CryptoCompare Aggregate Crypto Reference Prices will enhance institutional capabilities in the cryptocurrency markets across trading strategy, quantitative research, risk modelling, NAV calculations and back-testing. Based on CryptoCompare’s aggregate index datasets, the product will provide minute-by-minute pricing data for the most liquid cryptocurrency markets.”
The partnership marks the latest advance for CryptoCompare, which has tracked thousands of cryptocurrency projects since 2013. Information is money in markets, and Nasdaq has moved to give its customers the most comprehensive assortment of cryptoeconomic information possible. As the site’s CEO Charles Hayter said on the news:
“Reliable data is the bedrock of transparent, liquid markets and by bringing our high quality, granular dataset to a global institutional client base, via the Quandl platform, we will give traders and investors a competitive edge.”
On the Heels of a Partnership with BitMEX
The cryptocurrency tracker site is certainly on the move this week.
On Monday, CryptoCompare announced it had partnered with popular cryptocurrency derivatives platform BitMEX. The collaboration will see the tracker site deliver the exchange’s cryptocurrency futures data to the Refinitiv Eikon market products suite, with Refinitiv already being a “long-standing” partner of CryptoCompare’s.
Like the Nasdaq deal, the Refinitiv data pipeline is another figurative bridge in the direction of the mainstream, as Refinitiv’s Eikon is commonly characterized as the principal competitor to the widely popular Bloomberg Terminal.
Arthur Hayes, CEO of BitMEX, cast the strategic partnership as an effort to make institutions more readily participate in the wider cryptoeconomy:
“We are pleased to deliver a new wealth of data on cryptocurrency futures for institutional investors that can contribute to their overall confidence throughout their decision-making process.”
Nasdaq Has a Growing Cryptocurrency Footprint
In recent times, the owner-operators of the NASDAQ exchange have been making increased outreaches to the cryptocurrency ecosystem and those interested in it.
In April, the corporation added a real-time price index for Ripple’s XRP, the XRP Liquid Index (XRPLX), to its consolidated market data feed, the Nasdaq Global Index Data ServiceSM — otherwise known as GIDS.
The index comes courtesy of crypto research outfit Brave New Coin and after the firm already started providing bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH) indices to GIDS back in February.
In January, Nasdaq Ventures — the venture capital arm of its parent corporation — led a $20 million USD Series B funding round for Symbiont, a blockchain technology startup that’s building a smart contract platform geared toward institutional applications.
Accordingly, Nasdaq’s software wing — Nasdaq Financial Framework — agreed to incorporate the startup’s platform for exploring novel operational opportunities. As Symbiont CEO Mark Smith explained at the time:
“Symbiont will give Nasdaq the ability to originate a financial instrument and the smart contract to custody it on a blockchain, to allow trading to occur with their matching engine, to allow surveillance to occur across the network using Nasdaq technology and then to perform settlement on a blockchain.”
As such, Nasdaq’s crypto days may only just be beginning.
