The Crypto Ecosystem and Digital Asset Index Landscape

As digital assets continue to move into the institutional mainstream, investors are increasingly looking for ways to gain exposure to the space in a holistic way that considers all parts of the crypto value chain, from equities to digital assets. The S&P Digital Markets 50 Index is a hybrid benchmark that combines listed companies tied to the crypto ecosystem with direct exposure to major digital assets. This cross-asset approach provides broader access to the blockchain economy than digital assets alone.

Methodology of the S&P Digital Markets 50 Index¹

Looking at how the index is constructed, the equity portion constitutes 70% of the index and is made up of 35 U.S.-listed and -domiciled public companies from the S&P Global BMI that are involved in crypto and digital asset infrastructure (operators, infrastructure providers, financial services, blockchain applications and supporting technologies). These companies build the infrastructure and services that are central to the digital transformation, spanning areas including exchanges, custody, payments, on-ramps, analytics, hardware and institutional rails.

The digital assets portion comprises 30% of the index and is made up of 15 cryptocurrencies selected from the S&P Cryptocurrency Broad Digital Asset (BDA) Index. The inclusion of native protocols and assets like Bitcoin highlights the latter's status in the crypto market as the largest asset, often given the moniker "digital gold." Ethereum and Solana represent the use of protocols as Layer 2 networks and platforms, where much of the infrastructure for tokenization and trading is being built. Bitcoin and Ethereum are categorized as Level 1 crypto assets and individually capped at 5%, while all other crypto assets in the index are individually capped at 2.5%.

At the heart of the index is having a mixed representation of constituents and striking a balance between the equity and digital asset components, while also considering the weights of companies that are highly related to the crypto ecosystem (which we refer to as Level 1) and those that are somewhat related and contribute to the theme (which we refer to as Level 2). Level 1 companies with higher crypto ecosystem relatedness are capped at 5% to allow weight for other emerging Level 1 companies that may have a lower market cap and support the diversification of the index. Level 2 companies, which may have some involvement in DeFi, but a lower level, are capped at 2.5% at rebalance but have some runway intra-quarter. This can be valuable, ensuring that mega-cap companies like Alphabet (Google) and Nvidia—which have some involvement in crypto—do not dominate the index compared as they may with a market cap-weighted approach.

With the growing number of crypto-related companies, the index's equity component dropped Nvidia and Google during the June rebalance, with the theme purity of the equity segment increasing over time. As the crypto ecosystem develops, the "purity" of companies represented in the S&P Digital Markets 50 Index has increased over time when looking at changes to the composition of Level 1 and Level 2 companies, as shown in Exhibit 3.

Performance of the S&P Digital Markets 50 Index Compared to Relevant Benchmarks

The S&P Digital Markets 50 Index provides market participants with a view of some of the upside capture of the crypto market and characteristics of the equity market, with a lower downside versus pure crypto assets. For example, in 2022, the S&P Digital Markets 50 Index declined 15% less than the standalone S&P Bitcoin Index, which saw a downside of 64%. In 2021, the S&P Digital Markets 50 Index outperformed both the S&P 500 and the S&P Bitcoin Index, demonstrating the potential tailwinds that can occur when both crypto-linked equities and the digital assets universe beyond crypto are outperforming.

When compared to a similar multi-asset index—the S&P 500 and S&P Bitcoin 70/30 Blend Index—the S&P Digital Markets 50 Index outperformed over various time periods, including 2026 YTD, the three-year horizon, and since the index's first value date on Dec. 19, 2019.

For market participants with a strong interest in the future of digital assets and the crypto ecosystem, the S&P Digital Markets 50 Index could serve as a useful measure of this dual approach across equities and digital assets.

To learn more about the index, please see the S&P Digital Markets 50 Index brochure.

¹ Please see the S&P Crypto Ecosystem Index Methodology for the full details, such as constraint relaxation, turnover mitigation rules and corporate action treatment.

The posts on this blog are opinions, not advice. Please read our Disclaimers.

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As Brazil's capital markets continue to mature, market participants now have access to a new tool for measuring and tracking volatility: the S&P/B3 VIX^® Futures Index. Launched on May 25, 2026, this index represents a significant addition to the S&P/B3 Futures Indices and a meaningful step forward for the theme of volatility in Brazil.

What Is the S&P/B3 VIX Futures Index?

In December 2025, B3 launched VIX futures contracts on the S&P/B3 Ibovespa VIX—an implied volatility index that measures the market's 30-day expectations for the volatility of the Ibovespa, Brazil's headline equity benchmark. These contracts give market participants a direct and tradeable way to express a view on Brazilian equity volatility and to hedge equity market downturns.

The S&P/B3 VIX Futures Index is built based on these contracts and measures the performance of maintaining a constant 30-day long position in S&P/B3 Ibovespa VIX Futures. The index holds the next two near-term VIX futures contracts at any given time and rolls daily from the first- to second-month contracts in equal fractional amounts to maintain the constant one-month position.

Notably, the methodology is similar to the well-established S&P 500^® VIX Short-Term Futures Index, which underlies some investable volatility products for U.S. markets.

Putting the Index to Work

The S&P/B3 VIX Futures Index serves an important function in the equity volatility ecosystem. Because VIX itself is a statistical metric that is not replicable, a rolling futures index could be used to support volatility ETFs, structured products and other financial products. However, it is important to understand that while the S&P/B3 VIX Futures Index tends to be highly correlated to the spot S&P/B3 Ibovespa VIX (see Exhibit 1), the two indices are unlikely to experience similar percentage returns—particularly over longer periods of time. This is the result of a couple major factors.

First, the spot S&P/B3 Ibovespa VIX measures real-time market expectations of Ibovespa volatility, whereas the S&P/B3 VIX Futures Index reflects the forward price of volatility one month out; hence, the S&P/B3 VIX Futures Index will typically experience smaller changes in magnitude compared to the spot VIX.

Second, VIX futures markets are typically in contango—front-month contracts tend to trade cheaper than next-month contracts. As the S&P/B3 VIX Futures Index rolls from the cheaper to the pricier contract, it experiences a negative roll yield that erodes value over time. This is why volatility products built on the index are typically held for short-term periods.

This dynamic is evident in the more established U.S. market (see Exhibit 2), where the S&P 500 VIX Short-Term Futures Index has steadily decayed toward zero since 2020, even as the spot VIX continues to oscillate within its historical range, highlighting how negative roll yield can erode the value over time.

A New Chapter for Brazilian Volatility Markets

The launch of the S&P/B3 VIX Futures Index marks an important milestone for Brazil's derivatives market. The index follows the approach of the S&P 500 VIX Short-Term Futures Index, which underlies an ecosystem of tradable volatility products built on S&P 500 volatility. With Brazil entering an uncertain political phase ahead of upcoming elections and external headwinds such as U.S. tariffs, having reliable tools to measure and manage Brazilian market volatility could be essential. In a market defined by uncertainty, the S&P/B3 VIX Futures Index expands the risk management tools available to navigate volatile market cycles.

The posts on this blog are opinions, not advice. Please read our Disclaimers.

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The Financials sector has traditionally been categorized as value (i.e., stocks considered undervalued but with stable fundamentals) instead of growth (i.e., stocks with higher valuations but that are expected to grow faster than the market). Historical data supported this perception until recently (see Exhibit 1). By the end of May 2026, the weight gap for the Financials sector between the S&P Developed Ex-U.S. LargeMidCap Value and S&P Developed Ex-U.S. LargeMidCap Growth narrowed to less than 1% (24.3% versus 23.4%, respectively), after being around 21% one year prior (35.1% versus 14.3%, respectively). This change shows a notable convergence between styles.

The recent performance of international equities played a key role in this convergence. Driven by diversification away from U.S. equities, international equities have seen renewed interest. After posting one of its strongest annual performances in 2025 (up 35.1%), the S&P Developed Ex-U.S. LargeMidCap's outperformance persisted this year; by the end of May 2026, the index was up 16.1% YTD, while the S&P 500^® was up 11.3% YTD (see Exhibit 2). Financials, the largest GICS^® sector within the index by weight, has been the primary driver of this performance. It surged 52.0% in 2025 and was up 32.8% YTD by May 31, 2026.

To understand why this performance altered the sector's style profile, it is helpful to revisit how S&P Dow Jones Indices determines the style of an individual stock. According to the S&P Global BMI Methodology, a growth score-to-value score ratio is calculated for each stock. The style scores are calculated using standardized fundamental data of the company, as noted in a previous blog. Depending on the score, the float-adjusted market cap of a stock is assigned completely to the growth or value version of the index or is distributed proportionally based on its relative distance to the average value and growth scores. Exhibit 3 illustrates this classification.

With that framework in mind, the style reclassification is explained by two main factors. First, three of the four value factors (book-to-price, cash-flow-to-price and sales-to-price) are directly affected by share price movements. Since price appears in the denominator of these ratios, sharp price appreciation weakens the value score, assuming that balance sheet fundamentals do not rise at the same pace.

On the other hand, the growth score focuses on the growth of earnings and sales. In recent years, European banks have seen an improvement in profitability, while major Japanese banks reached record profit levels in 2025 for a second consecutive year.

Together, these developments have created a style reclassification effect. On one hand, valuation-based value signals weakened as bank share prices surged. On the other hand, rising earnings and improving performance profiles strengthened growth factors.

This shift was clearly visible during the September 2025 rebalance. Compared to the prior year, the weight of Financials in the S&P Developed Ex-U.S. LargeMidCap Growth increased from 12.5% to 24.0%, while its weight in the S&P Developed Ex-U.S. LargeMidCap Value declined from 32.3% to 26.1%. During this period, 19 stocks transitioned from being categorized as blended to growth, and 11 companies switched from value to growth, adding approximately USD 2.1 trillion in market capitalization to the S&P Developed Ex-U.S. LargeMidCap Growth (see Exhibit 4).

Large banks have not only driven index performance; they have also contributed to the migration across styles. BBVA, Royal Bank of Canada, UniCredit and Mitsubishi UFJ, which were part of the S&P Developed Ex-U.S. LargeMidCap Value before the September 2025 rebalance, represented 4.9% of the S&P Developed Ex-U.S. LargeMidCap Growth's total weight in May 2026.

In brief, the strong performance of international Financials in recent years, driven by both rising share prices and improved fundamentals, has altered the long-standing perception of the sector as exclusively value oriented. Internationally, Financials has become more balanced in terms of style, converging between growth and value weights.

The posts on this blog are opinions, not advice. Please read our Disclaimers.

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For more than a century, index providers have served a specific function in capital markets: define the standard, calculate the benchmark and the data, license the IP. The infrastructure was built for a world of market opens and closes, batch file delivery, and intermediated access. That infrastructure continues to work extraordinarily well.

But a parallel system is being built alongside it, and it operates on fundamentally different assumptions.

On-chain markets run 24/7. Settlement is programmable. Capital moves across protocols without intermediaries. Products that have no equivalent in traditional markets (perpetual futures without expiration, cross-chain margining, prediction markets scaling to billions in monthly volume) are being created and adopted at a pace that traditional market structure was never designed to match. Tokenized versions of traditional instruments (treasuries, credit, equities) are now accessible on-chain, reaching approximately $30 billion¹ and growing rapidly. These are not new asset classes. They are existing assets delivered through new, globally accessible, programmable infrastructure.

S&P Dow Jones Indices has created value by setting the benchmarks markets trust - through transparent methodologies, disciplined governance, and benchmark integrity that institutions rely on to allocate capital with confidence. That same value is now increasingly essential in DeFi, where market growth depends on trusted data, clear standards, and transparent infrastructure.

When spot crypto ETFs launched in the U.S., the benchmarks behind them came from crypto-native providers, not from traditional index firms. Those providers built real-time calculation capability, secured regulatory standing, and locked in relationships with ETF issuers while most of us were still evaluating the space. That is a competitive fact worth acknowledging, not explaining away.

However, the next wave of on-chain financial products will need index standards for asset classes that don't yet have them: DeFi protocol benchmarks, tokenized equity indices, on-chain structured products. And they will need those standards from providers with the governance, methodology, and institutional credibility that this industry was built on. That is where traditional index providers can meaningfully progress the industry, if we move with intention.

Moving with intention means three things.

First, it means becoming a participant in on-chain infrastructure, not just a licensor to it. Publishing index data through oracle networks. Running validators. Understanding staking not as a speculative activity but as a utility that generates data, connectivity, and credibility within protocol ecosystems. This is unfamiliar territory for the traditional index industry. It requires new models, not the abandonment of old principles.

Second, it means building technology that meets markets where they are. End-of-day batch calculation served a world that closed at 4PM. On-chain markets never close. Real-time, continuous, API-native data delivery is not a feature request. It is the minimum viable infrastructure for credibility.

Third, it means recognizing that standards lock in early. The index methodologies embedded in smart contracts and DeFi protocols today will be the defaults that institutional capital builds on tomorrow. Waiting for the market to mature before engaging is a strategy for irrelevance. The S&P 500^® became the global equity benchmark not only because it was the best U.S. large cap equity index when passive investing scaled. But also, because it was already the standard.

The same dynamic is playing out on-chain. The question is whether the next generation of financial market standards will carry the credibility of the institutions that built this industry, and as the world's leading index provider, we're aiming to lead the charge.

From Strategy to Execution

As demand for broader, diversified exposure to DeFi continues to grow, S&P Dow Jones Indices serves as a bridge between markets and investors—transforming complexity into transparency, investability, and governance across digital asset markets.

Some of our work is already visible:

• Facilitating fund tokenization. In July 2025, S&P DJI collaborated with Centrifuge to license the S&P 500 for fund tokenization, leading to the first licensed on-chain S&P 500 index fund in September 2025.
• Pioneering indices on-chain. In early 2026, S&P DJI and Kaiko announced the tokenization of the iBoxx U.S. Treasuries Index on the blockchain. The significance is not only symbolic. It marks the first time a major index provider has made a financial benchmark available as a native digital asset, with embedded index data distribution and permissioning ready for licensing.
• Innovative digital asset indices. In October 2025 the S&P Digital Markets 50 Index was launched, combining cryptocurrencies and publicly traded crypto-linked equities into a single benchmark. That approach reflects an increasingly important market reality: the boundary between digital assets and traditional securities is becoming less useful than the broader ecosystem view investors increasingly need.

These are not side projects. They are early signs of what it looks like when an index provider chooses to help shape on-chain finance rather than simply respond to it.

More broadly, as digital assets and tokenized markets continue to institutionalize, S&P Global is uniquely positioned as an enabler between TradFi and DeFi. Through our sister-divisions, Stablecoin Stability Assessments (now on-chain through Chainlink), the first credit rating of a DeFi protocol (Sky Protocol), and tax solutions for digital assets are among the early solutions S&P Global brings to the digital asset community.

If the next era of capital markets will be more programmable, more continuous, and more globally accessible, then the role of the index provider must evolve with it. The opportunity is not just to extend existing benchmarks into new channels. It is to bring the transparency, governance, and institutional trust that defined the last century of market infrastructure into the one now being built.

 

¹ Tokenized Real-World Assets Hit $30 Billion as Crypto Market Matures - CoinCentral

The posts on this blog are opinions, not advice. Please read our Disclaimers.

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In the previous wrap-up of the webinar "Benchmarking Digital Asset Funds: Are Managers Measuring Performance Effectively?" we discussed the manager perspective; here, we take a look at the allocator perspective and the index provider response to a maturing market and the institutional market's requirements for better benchmarks.

The ETF Effect: Bitcoin Beta Has Become Cheaper

If Bitcoin is an imperfect benchmark, it remains an unavoidable one for a different reason: it may now be considered the clearest expression of cheap, accessible crypto beta.

Chris Solarz framed the issue from the allocator's perspective. For him, benchmarking is the prerequisite for identifying alpha, because outperformance only has meaning relative to a credible alternative. And that alternative has changed materially since the arrival of spot Bitcoin ETFs. Solarz noted that Bitcoin exposure can now be obtained at low cost—he cited fee competition driving ETF pricing down to as little as 14 bps.¹

That has major implications for active managers. If investors can access core crypto beta passively and cheaply, then the justification for paying hedge fund-style fees rests on true excess return, not simply exposure to a rising market. Solarz put it plainly: the only thing investors should pay for is alpha. If net returns are not above what could have been achieved through a passive index or ETF, then the value proposition of active management becomes difficult to defend.

This is one of the webinar's most important institutional takeaways: the commoditization of beta is leading to more precise conversations about what active crypto managers actually do. That is healthy for the market, but it may raise the bar considerably.

A More Segmented Way to Measure Crypto Funds

Solarz's solution is not to abandon broad reference points, but to use a more segmented framework. When evaluating liquid digital asset managers, he starts with four benchmarks:

• Bitcoin;
• Ethereum;
• Solana; and
• Altcoins.

This approach recognizes that digital assets are not one homogeneous pool of risk. Bitcoin remains the dominant reference asset; Ethereum reflects a distinct smart-contract and ecosystem; Solana increasingly represents another major asset and the remaining altcoin universe requires its own lens.

This framework helps allocators ask sharper questions. Is a manager outperforming because they generated security selection alpha? Because they made a successful allocation call across crypto subsegments? Or because they simply maintained exposure to the best-performing beta bucket?

Solarz was also candid that no single framework fully resolves the issue. Institutional committees will still ask the obvious question: why not just own Bitcoin? That remains a fair opportunity-cost benchmark, especially for investors starting from zero. But he argued that relying on Bitcoin alone may do an injustice to the complexity of the asset class, where sectors such as DeFi, payments, gaming, metaverse and other subsectors can behave very differently.

In other words, Bitcoin may still be a starting point, but it may no longer be the end of the conversation.

Why Building Indices in Crypto Is Harder than It Looks

Rounding out the discussion with the index provider's perspective, S&P Dow Jones Indices (S&P DJI) approaches the market through several lenses: single-coin indices, multi-coin strategies, crypto-linked equity indices and hybrid cross-asset benchmarks that blend digital assets with traditional asset classes.

Even apparently simple questions like the following can become complex in this market.

• How should the price of a single token be constructed?
• Which exchanges should be used in the pricing methodology?
• What qualifies as large cap, mega cap or broad market in crypto?
• Should an index be purely market-cap weighted, equal weighted, capped or filtered?
• How should benchmark construction adapt as market concentration changes over time?

Index names alone never tell the full story. Methodology matters. Definitions matter. And in a market as dynamic as crypto, those definitions can change quickly as market structures evolve. At S&P DJI, we offer a range of digital asset solutions for different market objectives.

Learn more about our capabilities and view the full webinar replay.

 

¹ As of the time of the webinar. For more information, please see Daodu, Sam, "Bitcoin News: Morgan Stanley Just Launched the Cheapest Bitcoin ETF on the Market," Yahoo Finance, April 11, 2026.

The posts on this blog are opinions, not advice. Please read our Disclaimers.