Japan’s Nomura Research Institute Considers Introducing a New Cryptocurrency Index

Cryptocurrency investment solution provider Intelligence Unit (IU) announced a partnership with Japanese-based consulting company Nomura Research Institute (NRI) to introduce a new cryptocurrency index, popularly known as IU/NRI Crypto-Asset Index. 

The new cryptocurrency index offers an investment solution for financial institutions in Japan as well as global investors. The index will be drawing data from CryptoCompare, a cryptocurrency data platform, and MV Index Solutions, a crypto index platform. The cryptocurrency index is the initial crypto-asset benchmark designed for institutional investors in Japan. 

A tradable crypto market index

The two firms (the Intelligence Unit and the Nomura Research Institute) have mentioned that the cryptocurrency index focuses on covering all aspects of the crypto market. The index will track the prices of five cryptocurrencies – Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, and XRP. The five digital assets will be tracked based on the use of only two currencies (the United States dollar and the Japanese Yen) and will be available to trade in the two fiats.

The press release indicates that the cryptocurrency index can be utilized by institutional investors as a benchmark for objective investment appraisal. Moreover, it will allow financial information providers and crypto exchanges to display index values and charts to investors to be utilized as objective criteria to assess their investments.

The new instrument will be available through Nomura Research Institute’s financial information database to both international and domestic institutional clients. The offerings intend to start on January 31^st, 2020.

Thomas Kettner, managing director at MV Index Solutions, said, “We are delighted to unveil this index for the Nomura Research Institute and the Intelligence Unit. We are pleased to offer our deep expertise and services in digital assets indexing to the Japanese market.” 

Rising institutional demand for cryptocurrency investments

Akihiro Niimi, CEO of Intelligence Unit, mentioned, “Increasing demand from global institutional investors is what leads to the growing crypto-asset funds, and therefore well-diversified products/portfolios such as index funds are affordable and attractive as alternative investments. We intend to bridge the crypto-asset world and the traditional financial world by offering institutional-grade benchmarks for crypto assets, to further develop the status of crypto-assets as an alternative investment.”

The partnership is strategic to both parties. Nomura Research Institute’s collaboration with the Intelligence Unit gives cryptocurrencies to become widely recognized as an asset class. Thus, a significant number of companies see the potentials in introducing derivatives to help protect investors against exposure to price fluctuations.

With increasing institutional demand for digital asset investment, several index funds are set to emerge in the market. For instance, Stack, a Singapore-based digital asset platform, recently announced its intention of launching a Bitcoin index fund.

Meanwhile, Nomura Research Institute is a subsidiary company controlled and owned by Japan-based global investment bank Nomura Holdings that has embraced blockchain and provides many services associated with crypto assets. In May 2018, Nomura Holdings launched crypto custodial services at its banks to remove barriers to institutional investments in the crypto space.

Image via Shutterstock