Introducing AltDex: Benchmark Indices for the Cryptocurrency Market

A better way to monitor the market.

Published in

AltDex Blog

2 min readAug 1, 2018

Unlike in traditional capital markets, it can be difficult for cryptocurrency investors to properly gauge the performance of their investments relative to the rest of the market. The fragmented nature of the market leaves investors to rely on major currencies as the main investment benchmark.

However, relying on the market’s prominent base pair (BTC) as the main benchmark can result in a number of confounding variables, diminishing an investor’s understanding of portfolio performance. Now, as the cryptocurrency market begins to mature, investors need new tools to provide better insights into the performance of their holdings.

AltDex, a new cryptocurrency index platform, brings an industry-first set of market capitalization-weighted indices that cover multiple digital asset categories. Included in the launch is the AltDex 100 Index (ALT100), the AltDex Exchange Token Index (ALTEXC), and the AltDex Privacy Coin Index (ALTPRV).

Here’s all you need to know.

Index Criteria

AltDex leverages an adjusted market cap-weighted approach as the main filtering criteria for each of our indices. Each index will be reviewed and re-balanced on the first of every month.

General Exclusion Criteria

No stablecoins, egregious forks, or well-documented scam coins.
No coins with less than 5% circulating supply.
No coins with less than 1-month trading history.

General Weighting Criteria

All coins within a selected index will be weighted according to market cap-averaged from over 90 exchanges and 22,000 trading pairs.
Weighting is automatically updated every 5 minutes.
Each index has a starting value of 100

AltDex 100 Index (ALT100)

The AltDex 100 is a benchmark for the top-100 large-cap cryptocurrencies and tokens (not including stablecoins).

Number of Constituents: 100
Trailing 30-day average for daily trading volume must be higher than $100,000

AltDex Exchange Token Index (ALTEXC)

The AltDex Exchange Token Index tracks the industry’s leading crypto exchange tokens.

Number of Constituents: 25
Market capitalization greater than $5,000,000.

AltDex Privacy Coin Index (ALTPRV)

The AltDex Privacy Coin Index tracks cryptocurrencies and tokens focused on privacy or security.

Number of Constituents: 17
Market capitalization greater than $10,000,000.

The AltDex indices went live on July 9, 2018, and are actively monitored by the managing team, which plans to rebalance each index on the first of each month.