The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis announced that it is adding cryptocurrency price indices using data from Coinbase, the largest fiat-to-cryptocurrency exchange in the United States. The Fed branch integrated these indices into the Federal Reserve Economic Data feed.
“FRED has added four series on the prices of different cryptocurrencies: Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, and Litecoin. The price data are updated daily and span from as early as 2014 to the present. All data were obtained from Coinbase, a cryptocurrency exchange company,” the organization wrote.
FRED also includes the “Coinbase index,” which depicts the overall performance of cryptocurrencies offered by the exchange as a whole. Under this particular index, FRED mentioned that users should use the log scale to analyze data “given the volatility in the cryptocurrency markets.”
Along with adding these cryptocurrency price indexes into its economic data platform, James Bullard—the organization’s president—went to the Consensus cryptocurrency conference in New York, and stated that these coins could play a significant role in the economy.
However, this does not correlate with any measure of optimism regarding cryptocurrencies. Bullard also said that they might “unwittingly be pushing in the wrong direction in trying to solve an important social problem.”
Although he may have reservations about digital coins, Bullard certainly sees that this is a growing market that cannot be casually ignored. Adding market data about cryptocurrencies to a platform belonging to the Federal Reserve bank grants the coins a certain amount of legitimacy, something they might need in order to attain proper legal status on a governmental level. As of right now, the United States still does not recognize cryptocurrencies as assets that could be used to pay for state services.
This article appeared first on Cryptovest
