Nomura Launching Benchmark for Japan's Crypto Assets

Nomura Research Institute (NRI) will launch a benchmark rank and compare Japanese cryptocurrency assets on Friday.

The Tokyo-based management consultancy and research firm said the “NRI/IU Crypto-Asset Index Family” – created in coordination with Intelligence Unit LLC (IU) – will be available through NRI’s financial information database, IDS, to domestic and overseas institutional investors, financial information vendors and crypto exchanges.

The benchmark is intended to pull together information specific to the Japanese cryptocurrency market, including data on crypto-yen pairs and closing values, all in local time.

A benchmark index is a standard allowing traders to evaluate the performance of their portfolio or of a particular asset against the broader market.

"The increasing investment needs for crypto assets have, in turn, led to a high demand for a benchmark to appraise those investments," the company said in a release.

The NRI/IU benchmark will support bitcoin, ether, litecoin, bitcoin cash and XRP. It is calculated using the MVIS index platform, with cryptocurrency data supplied by CryptoCompare.

“Strong demand from institutional investors is contributing to the growth of crypto-asset funds, and well-diversified products like index funds are attractive as alternative investments," said Akihiro Niimi, IU CEO, in a statement. "We will bridge the traditional financial world and the crypto-asset world by providing institutional grade crypto-asset benchmarks, further establishing the status of crypto-assets as alternative investments."

In September, CF Benchmarks became the first cryptocurrency index provider to be licensed in Europe after the U.K.'s financial watchdog gave it a BenchMark Administrator (EU BMR) license, allowing institutions to use its indices in any European financial products.

Nasdaq launched an AI-powered index of the top-100 best performing cryptocurrencies for Wall Street traders in October.