India’s CoinSwitch Exchange Rolls Out Rupee-based Altcoin Index

Indian cryptocurrency exchange CoinSwitch on Thursday launched the country’s maiden benchmark altcoin index to track the performance of the rupee-based crypto market.

Based on real-time transactions on the CoinSwitch app, CRE8 — the Crypto Rupee Index — tracks eight of the most highly-traded cryptocurrencies in the Indian market: bitcoin, ether, BNB, XRP, cardano, solana, polkadot and dogecoin. 

“The index addresses a gap in the market. Until now, Indian users had to rely on international [indexes] denominated mostly in US dollars to assess the market,” Ashish Singhal, co-founder and CEO of CoinSwitch, told Blockworks.

“These [dollar indexes], however, do not provide a true picture of the Indian market as they do not take into account the demand and supply specific to the Indian rupee-based market, nor the INR exchange rate.”

The index represents the total market value of all cryptoassets traded in the Indian market relative to a base date of October 1, 2020, and a base value of 1,000 Indian rupees ($12.90), rather than in US dollars. Data will be refreshed 1,400 times a day to ensure the latest updates for observers and will be amended to include new constituents each quarter. 

The CRE8 index was last up 0.88% at press time, but is down 44% in the past 12 months.

In the US, investors can track various similar benchmarks, such as the S&P Cryptocurrency Index and the Nasdaq Crypto Index. Digital-asset investing firm CoinShares also maintains several indexes that track cryptoassets, designed to suit investors with distinct exposures.

Valued at nearly $2 billion, CoinSwitch is a prominent crypto exchange in India that is backed by investors including Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Coinbase Ventures, Tiger Global and Sequoia Capital. It has 18 million registered users, according to company-provided figures.

Trading volumes in India plummeted as much as 60% in April after the government imposed a 30% tax on crypto earnings, which some criticized as a drastic move that crushes the digital asset economy of the country.

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