The largest Russian stock market, Moscow Exchange, is now calculating its own Bitcoin index, reflecting the price of the leading cryptocurrency on major coin trading platforms.
The move, which comes shortly after the exchange started trading Bitcoin futures, is seen as another step towards integrating decentralized digital assets into Russia’s conservative financial system.
Moscow Exchange introduces its own Bitcoin index
The Moscow Exchange (MOEX) has for the first time published the value of its new cryptocurrency index, Moscow Exchange PFI Bitcoin Index (MOEXBTC). On Tuesday, the day it was launched, the indicator grew by 3.1%, slightly exceeding $109,169. On Wednesday, it reached $109,439 and change, marking a 0.25% increase.
The Bitcoin index is calculated once daily, at 12:30 p.m. Moscow time, the stock trading venue explained in a press release while also providing a detailed description on its website of the exact methodology employed.
MOEXBTC is based on price data of perpetual futures and swaps for the BTC/USDT pair. MOEX said it’s collecting the numbers from four of the largest crypto exchanges in terms of daily volume – Binance, Bybit, OKX, and Bitget.
These have been weighted as follows: Binance at 50%; Bybit 20%; OKX 15%; Bitget 15%, according to the index’s dedicated page. Noting that the coefficients are based on trading volumes and will be revised quarterly, MOEX said:
“The index will be calculated as a weighted average of prices taking into account the weighting coefficients of the selected trading platforms.”
Moscow Exchange launches its Bitcoin index after the Central Bank of Russia (CBR) officially confirmed last month that Russian financial institutions can legally offer qualified investors derivatives and other financial instruments linked to the value of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC).
Following Bank of Russia’s approval at the end of May, MOEX started trading futures contracts for the shares of BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF (IBIT). The Bitcoin futures volume reached $5 million during the first day of trading on June 4.
Sberbank and Finam also announced crypto-related products.
Russia takes the road to cryptocurrency integration
While all the new crypto instruments have been made available exclusively to “highly qualified” investors, their offering has been viewed as a move towards integrating crypto assets in Russia’s traditional finances.
Elena Baklanova, senior analyst at the financial analytics firm Euler, commented for the Russian business news portal RBC:
“Since various instruments with an underlying asset in the form of cryptocurrency began to appear on the market, the launch of the [Bitcoin] index on the Moscow Exchange was a logical step.”
According to Roman Nekrasov, co-founder of the blockchain solutions provider ENCRY Foundation, the creation of a Russian Bitcoin index, largely a symbolic move at this point, is part of a broader strategy to integrate crypto assets into the established financial system.
“Like the launch of futures on IBIT, MOEXBTC is an attempt to integrate crypto into the framework that is already familiar to the regulator, without physical delivery, without trading in the asset itself,” the analyst told the crypto news outlet Forklog, elaborating:
“This is a conservative, regulated experiment that allows us to test participants’ interest without going beyond the current legislation.”
“The key question remains whether a sufficient number of secondary instruments will be created for the index to work as a full-fledged basis. Without this, it will remain an indicator ‘for show’,” Nekrasov emphasized.
Russia, which has been tempted to use cryptocurrencies to circumvent sanctions, has yet to adopt comprehensive rules for digital assets such as Bitcoin. The CBR, which still stands in the way of allowing their free circulation in the Russian economy, proposed earlier this year to introduce an “experimental legal regime” that would facilitate crypto transactions under close regulatory oversight.
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