S&P’s New Crypto Index Excludes XRP and Bitcoin: Here’s the Real Reason

1 hour ago 1

Sam Daodu

Wed, July 22, 2026 astatine 8:41 AM CDT 6 min read

Quick Read

  • S&P Dow Jones Indices and Pantera Capital launched an 18-coin crypto scale led by Ethereum, BNB, Solana, Tron and Hyperliquid, and near retired some Bitcoin and XRP.

  • A coin lone qualifies if the protocol down it earns consecutive quarters of gross and returns immoderate of that wealth to token holders—a regularisation modeled connected the S&P 500's four-quarter net test.

  • XRP's full pain since 2012 totals astir $16 million, which is little than 1% of the $3 cardinal the 18 qualifying coins make yearly.

  • The exclusion stings XRP much than Bitcoin, fixed that inferior is XRP's halfway worth transportation portion Bitcoin's integer golden communicative ne'er required revenue.

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S&P Dow Jones Indices, the institution down the S&P 500, launched a caller crypto benchmark this week with concern steadfast Pantera Capital. The S&P Pantera Digital Asset Index holds 18 tokens led by Ethereum, BNB, Solana, Tron and Hyperliquid, and it leaves retired some Bitcoin (CRYPTO:BTC) and XRP (CRYPTO:XRP).

S&P says neither coin generates revenue, which sounds unusual for the 2 astir wide held names successful crypto. Here's our reappraisal of what the scale measures, the regularisation that unopen some coins out, and whether it matters for anyone holding some cryptos.

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What the New S&P Crypto Index Actually Measures

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Most crypto indexes fertile coins by marketplace value, truthful Bitcoin and XRP astir ever apical the list. The S&P Pantera scale follows antithetic criteria, and it doesn't see the biggest coins by default. The index's regularisation is that a protocol has to gain money, and immoderate of that wealth has to scope the token holders. So, if a coin fails either of the 2 conditions, it stays retired nary substance however large it is.

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The thought comes from accepted finance, wherever a money manager weighing shares starts with net and what gets returned to shareholders. Crypto has ne'er offered thing similar, truthful astir allocation has tally connected sanction designation instead, and that's wherefore apical cryptos similar Bitcoin and XRP marque the chopped nary substance what. However, the S&P is present applying the accepted concern trial to integer assets.

Eighteen coins made it through, including the lending protocol Aave, though S&P hasn't published the afloat list. Once a coin qualifies, its marketplace worth decides however large a stock of the scale it gets, with the largest holding capped astatine 35% and each different coin capped astatine 20%. S&P past rebalances the scale each quarter, adjusting each coin's value arsenic its marketplace worth changes.

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