Decoding Crypto Indexing: Challenges and Opportunities

Can Crypto Be Indexed? In this episode I discuss with Jessica Ellerm co-founder of TheMelia https://themelia.co/, whether crypto can be indexed and why crypto indexing differs from traditional markets. 

We explore the enormous token universe and the need for strong screening to avoid scams and illiquid assets, including Melia’s primary filters on minimum market cap and daily volume plus user-defined constraints. 

We cover data integrity challenges such as wash trading and unreliable exchanges, and how multiple institutional-grade data feeds, averaging, and outlier detection can improve pricing. 

We also examine operational realities like 24/7 trading, real-time rebalancing, changes in circulating supply, forks, and delistings, and why many crypto indexes struggle to beat Bitcoin on a risk-adjusted basis. 

We close on more dynamic approaches that blend rules-based indexing with analyst and AI-agent insights, including long/short index-pair strategies. 

Jessica https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessicaellerm/ is the CEO and Co-Founder of Themelia, a custom indexing platform for cryptocurrencies. She previously co-founded and sold an Australian superannuation fund, and has worked across high-growth fintech startups in the payments and funds management sector for the past 17 years.