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Why the Crypto Market Still Doesn't Have Its Own "S&P 500"

Astron Team · 09/24/2026 · 3 min read

On Wall Street, the S&P 500 is the market's yardstick. In the crypto world, there's no single index playing that role, and traders end up watching several indicators at once, which don't always agree.

One example shows the difference. The S&P 500 is near its highs, but about 257 of the 500 companies are below their 200-day average, a sign of a rally concentrated in a few names. In crypto, it's the opposite: 88 of the 100 largest tokens, including Bitcoin and Ethereum, are above that average.

There's no shortage of candidates for a benchmark. The CoinDesk 20 brings together 20 liquid assets and caps the weight of the largest ones. S&P has a broad index, with almost 200 assets, and another with the 30 largest coins. Nasdaq and CME created an index aimed at institutional investors. Since each one measures things differently, the results can diverge on the same day.

In practice, traders combine three gauges: Bitcoin's own price, total market capitalization (with and without BTC and ETH), and Bitcoin dominance. Since the list of top projects changes quickly and two assets concentrate much of the value, perhaps a single number will never capture the crypto market.

Source: Traders Union.