S&P and Pantera exclude Bitcoin from new income-based crypto index

S&P Dow Jones Indices and Pantera Capital have launched an 18-asset crypto index that does not include Bitcoin and ranks the most relevant blockchain networks by protocol revenue earned within the last two quarters.

According to a joint announcement from the companies, the S&P Pantera Digital Asset Index is designed to measure established network activity instead of relying solely on token prices or market capitalization. The benchmark may support investment products, institutional allocations, and fully managed digital asset portfolios.

Bitcoin and XRP are the biggest holdings from the S&P Cryptocurrency Broad Digital Asset Index that failed to hit the new benchmark, S&P Dow Jones Indices wrote in an Indexology blog post. Their absence comes from index income requirements rather than their market value, leverage, or name recognition.

S&P Dow Jones Indices CEO Kathy Clay told CNBC that Bitcoin is not eligible because it is not a revenue-generating protocol under the index’s rules.

“Bitcoin isn’t there because it’s not really one of these money-generating systems that we think belongs in this index and meets all the requirements.”

Unlike smart-contract platforms, Bitcoin rewards miners with newly minted coins and transaction fees for securing its network. S&P’s approach, however, focuses on activity-linked revenue across contracts and applications, favoring blockchains that collect payments from activities, trades and other services.

Clay told CNBC that S&P wants to apply the principles used in traditional equity indices to digital assets by measuring factors that are important to professional investors. This approach creates a benchmark that focuses on the economic performance of blockchain networks rather than just the size of their tokens.

The income of the protocol determines which crypto assets are eligible

Derived from the S&P Cryptocurrency Broad Digital Asset Index, the eligible universe must first pass the minimum requirements for protocol capitalization, market capitalization and liquidity, according to the companies. The goods that clear those screens are measured by the total income of the protocol in all the last two parts.

The adjusted market capitalization then determines the weight of each eligible asset. Under the index rules, the largest share cannot exceed 35%, and the other index is usually limited to 20%.

Quarterly rebalancing allows the benchmark to add, remove or resize components as their income, capital expenditure and market value change. As a result, the asset position is dependent on the continued use of the network and its ability to meet the trading needs of the index.

Ether, BNB, Solana, TRON and Hyperliquid’s HYPE token held the top five positions at launch, according to S&P’s Indexology post. Each asset represents a network that collects revenue from transactions or applications running on its infrastructure.

In comparison, most crypto benchmarks give Bitcoin its largest share because they use market capitalization as the main weighting measure. Bitcoin represented about 57% of the total cryptocurrency market when the index was launched, according to CoinGecko data cited by Investopedia.

The Nasdaq CME Crypto Index assigns Bitcoin a weight of about 77%, while Ether holds about 13%, Investopedia reports. The FTSE Digital Asset All Cap Index also put almost 75% of its weight in Bitcoin, showing how market-based approaches can focus portfolios on the largest asset.

The new S&P benchmark does not remove market capitalization from the calculation entirely. Instead, the methodology uses income to determine which assets qualify and how they rank before the adjusted market value sets their final weights.

Pantera Capital’s participation also links the index to a crypto-focused investment manager that has backed blockchain projects and digital assets. Under the joint framework, S&P provides its expertise in index construction and governance while Pantera contributes expertise in blockchain networks and their economic models.

Fund providers are increasing crypto exposure to multiple assets

The currency-based index follows S&P Dow Jones Indices’ launch of the S&P Digital Markets 50 Index in October 2025. That benchmark includes 15 cryptocurrencies and 35 publicly traded companies involved in digital asset infrastructure and services, according to S&P’s index description.

Hashdex also expands index-based crypto investments through the Nasdaq Crypto Index US ETF. The manager says the fund runs due diligence checks including market size, capital, custody and US regulatory requirements before assets enter its bench.

Franklin Templeton entered the category in February 2025 with the Franklin Crypto Index ETF, or EZPZ. At launch, the fund tracked Bitcoin and Ether with the CF Institutional Digital Asset Index, according to the company’s launch announcement.

Franklin later expanded the fund’s underlying index to include XRP, Solana, Dogecoin, Cardano, Stellar and Chainlink alongside Bitcoin and Ether, according to the manager’s current product information. The additions show how rules-based cryptocurrencies can change their holdings when more assets meet regulatory and investment requirements.

MarketVector Indexes and Coinbase Asset Management took another route in April by launching the Coinbase Store of Value Index. Their benchmark combines Bitcoin and token gold and uses inverse volatility measurement, which gives less weight to assets that show higher price swings.

Bitwise chief investment officer Matt Hougan predicted in December that crypto index funds would become important in 2026 because the market was growing more complex and the use cases were multiplying. In a Bitwise investment memo, Hougan argued that diversified funds can help investors gain exposure without identifying every single winner.

The S&P Pantera index uses that idea of ​​diversity in revenue-generating networks, leaving the largest cryptocurrency in the market without a benchmark while giving leading positions to blockchains with measurable financial functions.