CoinDesk Widened Its Bitcoin and Ether Price Benchmarks

CoinDesk Indices changed the exchange composition of eight single-asset cryptocurrency price indices at 4 p.m. Eastern time on June 22, 2025, widening the venue sets behind its principal bitcoin and ether benchmarks while also reshuffling several smaller-asset indices.

Bitfinex was added to the CoinDesk Bitcoin Price Index, or XBX, and LMAX Digital was added to the CoinDesk Ether Price Index, or ETX. No exchange was removed from either of those two benchmarks. The change mattered because the indices were not merely informational price displays: Grayscale used XBX and ETX to determine operational index prices for exchange-traded products holding bitcoin and ether.

Eight index rosters changed

CoinDesk Indices announced the results on June 6 and scheduled implementation for June 22. Its complete table covered eight indices. Bitstamp replaced Bitfinex in the Cardano index, while Crypto.com replaced Gemini in the Basic Attention Token index. ItBit joined the Litecoin index, LMAX Digital left the Solana index, Bitfinex and Bitstamp joined the Uniswap index as Crypto.com departed, and Crypto.com joined the Tezos index.

That produced eight additions and four deletions across the eight benchmarks. Those figures are a count of the provider’s published table, not trading-volume measurements. A venue appearing in multiple index changes represents a separate asset-specific decision each time.

The bitcoin and ether changes expanded rather than replaced their contributing sets. Grayscale’s subsequent regulatory filings identified seven XBX platforms—Coinbase, Kraken, Bitstamp, Crypto.com, LMAX Digital, Bullish and Bitfinex—and five ETX platforms—Coinbase, Kraken, Crypto.com, Bullish and LMAX Digital.

Why an exchange roster affects a benchmark

Grayscale’s contemporaneous annual disclosure described the bitcoin index price as a 4 p.m. New York-time value derived by applying a weighting algorithm to price and trading-volume data from selected platforms over the preceding 24 hours. The trust characterized the result as a non-GAAP operational measure used in calculating net asset value per share, rather than the fair-value measure used in its financial statements.

Adding a venue therefore changed the potential input set for the benchmark. It did not mean that every exchange received equal influence. CoinDesk said Bitfinex and LMAX Digital qualified under minimum-liquidity requirements, but the announcement did not publish their realized weights on June 22 or quantify how much either addition changed the displayed index level.

Using multiple venues can reduce dependence on any single exchange and incorporate a broader pool of observable spot trading. It also introduces dependencies on each contributor’s data quality, uptime and market integrity. An index algorithm can reduce the influence of anomalies; it cannot make fragmented cryptocurrency trading equivalent to a consolidated securities-market tape.

The timing separated implementation from valuation

The roster reset occurred on a Sunday, when cryptocurrency markets remained open but shares of the U.S.-listed Grayscale products did not trade. Grayscale’s disclosures said its operational index price was calculated at 4 p.m. New York time on each business day. Consequently, June 22 established the new methodology input set, while the next ordinary business-day valuation would occur on June 23. That timing is an inference from the two published schedules, not an independently reported valuation event.

The change should not be interpreted as evidence that bitcoin or ether became more valuable, that tracking error necessarily declined, or that Bitfinex and LMAX Digital supplied a particular share of price discovery. Establishing those effects would require timestamped constituent weights, venue-level trades and before-and-after benchmark calculations that were not included in the reviewed records.

Later filing confirmation

Grayscale filed current reports with the Securities and Exchange Commission on June 25 confirming that the changes had become effective on June 22. Those filings corroborate the event date and affected products, but they were not public on June 22 and are therefore treated as later confirmation rather than contemporaneous investor knowledge.