Galaxy Digital partners with Bloomberg for DeFi index

According to Bloomberg, the nine DeFi assets selected for the index at launch were based on “institutional trading and custody readiness” in the United States.

Financial news site Bloomberg and Galaxy Digital Management have expanded their crypto offering to track the performance of the decentralized finance space.

In a Thursday announcement, Bloomberg said it would launch an index currently tracking nine different decentralized finance, or DeFi, projects with Galaxy Digital. As of Aug. 1, these projects included Uniswap (UNI), Aave (AAVE), Maker (MKR), Compound (COMP), Yearn.Finance (YFI), Synthetic (SNX), SushiSwap (SUSHI), 0x (ZXR), and Uma (UMA).

“Decentralized finance is growing as the next major investment theme within crypto,” said Alan Campbell, Bloomberg’s multi-asset index business’ head of product management. “As liquidity and institutional custody solutions continue to grow, DeFi has become an increasingly compelling option for institutional investors.”

According to Bloomberg, the DeFi assets were selected “based on institutional trading and custody readiness” in the United States, in addition to the “quality of pricing.” The news outlet said no single project would ever represent less than 1% of the index’s overall value, but no more than 40%. The funds arm of Galaxy Digital, Galaxy Fund Management, will also offer its own passively managed fund tracking the performance of Bloomberg’s, listed under the ticker DEFI.

Related: Coop to include BadgerDAO in DPI DeFi index from August

The announcement comes three years after Bloomberg and Galaxy Digital first partnered to create a joint crypto benchmark index. At its launch in May 2018, the index tracked ten cryptocurrencies from the “largest, most liquid portion” of the market, which included Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH).

Bloomberg and Galaxy Digital’s new DeFi index follows the creation of a DeFi Crypto Index Fund operated by fund manager Bitwise in February. Though Bitwise reported returns of 46.4% over the last month, the fund has a net asset value of 8.6% less since its inception.