Coinbase to launch index fund for cryptocurrencies

Coinbase, one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world, is launching an index fund for cryptocurrencies, the company announced Tuesday.

The Coinbase Index Fund is a weighted average fund that ranks cryptocurrencies based on their market cap.

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The fund will give users exposure to all of the assets listed on Coinbase's exchange, GDAX. Currently, this includes just four cryptocurrencies: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash and Litecoin.

Currently, the CIF is only available to U.S.-resident, accredited investors. "We’re working on launching more funds which are available to all investors and cover a broader range of digital assets," Coinbase said in a blog post.

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The Coinbase Index Fund is currently accepting applications; there's no word on when it will begin trading. The fund will charge an annual fee of 2% for managing assets, and will accept U.S. dollars as well as cryptocurrency.

The company also announced the Coinbase Index, which measures the performance of assets listed on GDAX (again, the four listed above)

Credit: Coinbase

The methodology behind the Coinbase Index is described in this document. One interesting thing about the CI is that it measures market capitalization as price multiplied by total supply of coins that have been created since the first block on the asset's blockchain. This is different from how it's done on popular cryptocurrency price tracker CoinMarketCap, which calculates market cap as price multiplied by circulating supply.

The Coinbase Index uses price data from GDAX, and it will be reconstituted every time a new asset is listed on GDAX.

With this move, Coinbase joins companies like Grayscale, which already runs several cryptocurrency-tracking funds. But Coinbase's influence in the cryptocurrency space (the company was adding millions of new users per month toward the end of 2017) will probably bring a lot of exposure to its newly-launched index and fund, especially if the company keeps its promise of making the fund available to retail investors as well.

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