S&P’s New Crypto Index Excludes XRP and Bitcoin: Here’s the Real Reason

S&P’s New Crypto Index Excludes XRP and Bitcoin: Here’s the Real Reason Sam Daodu Wed, July 22, 2026 at 3:41 PM GMT+2 6 min read XRP-USD BTC-USD ETH-USD BNB-USD ^GSPC Quick Read S&P Dow Jones Indices and Pantera Capital launched an 18-coin crypto index led by Ethereum, BNB, Solana, Tron and Hyperliquid, and left out both Bitcoin and XRP. A coin only qualifies if the protocol behind it earns consecutive quarters of revenue and returns some of that money to token holders—a rule modeled on the S&P 500's four-quarter earnings test. XRP's entire burn since 2012 totals roughly $16 million, which is less than 1% of the $3 billion the 18 qualifying coins generate yearly.

The exclusion stings XRP more than Bitcoin, given that utility is XRP's core value pitch while Bitcoin's digital gold narrative never required revenue. Don't wait: the analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just revealed his top 10 AI stocks. See the full list FREE now .

S&P Dow Jones Indices, the company behind the S&P 500, launched a new crypto benchmark this week with investment firm Pantera Capital. The S&P Pantera Digital Asset Index holds 18 tokens led by Ethereum, BNB, Solana, Tron and Hyperliquid, and it leaves out both Bitcoin (CRYPTO:BTC) and XRP (CRYPTO:XRP). S&P says neither coin generates revenue, which sounds strange for the two most widely held names in crypto.

Here's our review of what the index measures, the rule that shut both coins out, and whether it matters for anyone holding both cryptos. AlpakaVideo / Shutterstock. com What the New S&P Crypto Index Actually Measures Photo by Michael M.

Santiago/Getty Images Most crypto indexes rank coins by market value, so Bitcoin and XRP almost always top the list. The S&P Pantera index follows different criteria, and it doesn't include the biggest coins by default. The index's rule is that a protocol has to earn money, and some of that money has to reach the token holders.

So, if a coin fails either of the two conditions, it stays out no matter how big it is. Don't wait: the analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just revealed his top 10 AI stocks. See the full list FREE now .

The idea comes from traditional finance, where a fund manager weighing shares starts with earnings and what gets returned to shareholders. Crypto has never offered anything similar, so most allocation has run on name recognition instead, and that's why top cryptos like Bitcoin and XRP make the cut no matter what. However, the S&P is now applying the traditional business test to digital assets.

Eighteen coins made it through, including the lending protocol Aave, though S&P hasn't published the full list. Once a coin qualifies, its market value decides how big a share of the index it gets, with the largest holding capped at 35% and every other coin capped at 20%. S&P then rebalances the index every quarter, adjusting each coin's weight as its market value changes.

Story Continues Pantera, which has been investing in crypto since 2013, says it has already started talking to asset managers about launching products that track the index. However, no ETF has been filed yet, so the index remains a benchmark that nobody can buy or short. The Rule That Kept XRP and Bitcoin Out DaLiu / Shutterstock.

com To join the S&P 500, a company has to post four straight quarters of positive earnings, and the crypto version of that test asks for something similar. A protocol needs consecutive quarters of revenue above a minimum level, checked against on-chain data from the blockchain analytics firm Artemis. However, earning the revenue only gets a protocol halfway, because that money also has to reach the people holding the token.

A blockchain can collect enormous fees that end up with miners, validators or the company running it, while the token holder gets nothing out of it. So, S&P only counts the revenue when a protocol buys its own tokens back, burns part of the supply, pays holders directly, hands them staking income worth more than what new supply dilutes away, or puts the money into a treasury that holders control. On the other hand, paying people in freshly created tokens doesn't count.

Printing more supply and calling it a yield doesn't make anyone richer, and the index treats it that way. Cathy Clay, who runs S&P Dow Jones Indices, told CNBC that Bitcoin is "not one of those revenue-generating protocols" the index was built for, and that both Bitcoin and XRP failed the test. Between them, the 18 coins that qualified generate more than $3 billion a year, with Solana alone booking roughly $1.

3 billion in 2025 from the trading, apps and transfers running across its network. Meanwhile, Ethereum, the largest holding in the index, earned around $524 million over the same period. Why XRP's Burn and Bitcoin's Fees Don't Count Virrage Images / Shutterstock.

com XRP's exclusion is the stranger of the two, because the XRP Ledger already does one of the things on S&P's list. Every transaction burns a small fee, permanently destroying that XRP and shrinking the supply, which is the exact mechanism the index counts. However, the scale is far too small to register.

The XRP Ledger has burned around 14 million XRP across fourteen years, worth roughly $16 million at today's price. The 18 coins in the index generate more than $3 billion every year, so XRP's entire burn history since 2012 adds up to about half a percent of what the index expects from its members annually. Beyond the burn, XRP's economic activity is cross-border payments, and the fees from that business go to Ripple and the banks moving the money.

Very little of it reaches anyone holding XRP in a wallet, and that's the second condition XRP fails. Bitcoin misses for a different reason. It does earn transaction fees, but that money goes to miners rather than holders, and fees are only a small share of what miners collect.

Most of their income is the block subsidy, currently 3. 125 BTC per block, or roughly 450 newly created bitcoin a day, worth about $30 million at current prices. So, both networks generate genuine economic activity, but neither one routes the proceeds to the people holding the coin, which is the specific thing S&P set out to measure.

Does Being Left Out Actually Hurt XRP and Bitcoin? Neither coin moved on the news, which answers the question for now. Bitcoin trades around $65,800 and XRP around $1.

14, both roughly flat, and both are tracking the escalating conflict between the U. S. and Iran rather than a benchmark nobody can buy yet.

The exclusion also carries a different meaning for each coin. Bitcoin has never claimed to generate revenue, and the digital gold narrative doesn't depend on it, since nobody dismisses gold for failing to pay a dividend. Being left out of a revenue index is close to confirmation of what Bitcoin already says it is.

XRP is the one that's harder to shrug off. XRP's utility is its entire argument, and it's what holders point to whenever the price disappoints. Getting excluded from an index built to measure exactly that utility works against XRP's own pitch in a way it never could for Bitcoin.

That said, this is one benchmark measuring one narrow thing, not a verdict on either asset. S&P already runs individual reference indices for Bitcoin and XRP, alongside Ethereum, Solana, Aave, Cardano, Chainlink and Polkadot, so neither coin has been dropped from its coverage. Don't wait: the analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just revealed his top 10 AI stocks.

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