Last week, two major players in the US financial markets—Nasdaq Stock Market and CME Group—announced a significant move: merging their respective cryptocurrency index products. The original "Nasdaq Crypto Index" has been officially renamed to "Nasdaq-CME Crypto Index," which means that future index benchmarks will be jointly maintained and published by both parties.

This merged index tracks seven mainstream crypto assets, including Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), XRP, Solana (SOL), Chainlink (LINK), Cardano (ADA), and Avalanche (AVAX). The inclusion of these seven cryptocurrencies covers the two largest market cap projects and also considers representative tokens from various blockchain ecosystems.

Industry reactions suggest that this merger has great potential for the development of index-based crypto ETFs. Sean Wasserman, Head of Index Product Management at Nasdaq, stated that index-based investment approaches represent the future direction of the market, gradually surpassing single-asset investment models. The emergence of a unified benchmark will provide asset management institutions with clearer tracking standards and offer retail investors more standardized and transparent index tracking tools. Industry insiders generally believe that this move will accelerate innovation and implementation of index-based crypto ETF products.