The Digital Asset Taxonomy System now classifies 1,381 assets, offering the broadest coverage on the market
London, Santa Monica, and New York, November 30, 2022 - Wilshire, a global investment technology and advisory company, and Digital Asset Research (DAR), a specialized provider of 'clean' digital asset data, research and insights, today announced that 80 additional assets have been classified and added to the Digital Asset Taxonomy System (DATS) as a result of its rule-based quarterly review process.
DATS now classifies 1,381 digital assets, the broadest coverage in the market, to enable traditional and digital-native financial institutions to perform sector-based performance attribution, assess sector themes and construct custom portfolios.
DATS routinely classifies the top 1,000 digital assets by market capitalization at the end of each quarter. The classification of an additional 80 digital assets at the October review follows a turbulent trading period over the last three quarters which resulted in significant changes to the market capitalization of many digital assets.
There were also three changes to the priority waterfall used when classifying digital assets:
- Reprioritization of DAO Governance Shares.
Digital assets that contain governance power are now taxonomized according to their primary use case and take a secondary "Governance" flag if they also have governance-related functionality.
- Addition of a "Governance" flag.
Digital assets that contain governance power are now given an additional "Governance" flag.
- Clarified definition of the "Environmentally Focused" taxonomy theme.
Applies to digital assets that are layer 1 coins which utilize energy efficient consensus mechanisms or directly address green or environmentally focused credentials.
These changes resulted in updated subsector classifications for 200 previously classified assets as a result of the quarterly review process. The updated classifications were implemented on November 15, 2022.
Martin Howard, SVP of Index Research at Wilshire commented, "Quarterly reviews of the Digital Asset Taxonomy System ensure that the sector classification remains representative of this nascent and rapidly evolving asset class. By publishing the rules-based methodology we aim to bring the utmost transparency to classification so that institutions can make investment decisions based on trusted data."
Doug Schwenk, CEO of Digital Asset Research (DAR) and Deputy Co-Chair of the Wilshire Digital Assets Advisory Group, commented, "The continued evolution of DATS to provide the most comprehensive coverage and increasing information about each crypto asset is indicative of the fast growing nature of digital assets and our commitment to providing structure and standards to the space."
How can investors use DATS in their investment management operations?
Traditional and digital-native asset owners, product issuers, custodians and research service providers can license DATS for the same purposes as they would adopt an equity or fixed income classification system:
" Developing digital asset investment strategies and risk policies
" Issuing index-linked products based on sector themed indexes
" Conducting performance attribution
" Constructing custom digital asset portfolios
The next review will be in January 2023. Visit www.wilshire.com/dats for more information and for the full DATS methodology.
About Wilshire
Wilshire offers a wide range of discretionary and advisory multi-asset class and alternative investment solutions, market-leading indexes, and investment decision support tools. Founded in 1972, Wilshire advises on $1.3 trillion and manages $84 billion in assets. Wilshire serves more than 500 institutional and financial intermediary clients from 10 offices around the world.
About Digital Asset Research
Digital Asset Research (DAR) is a specialized provider of 'clean' digital asset data, insights, and research for institutional clients. Since 2017, DAR leads by rigorously vetting out noisy inputs for flagship clients such as Bloomberg, Chainlink, and Wilshire. Each day, DAR processes 250+ million trades to calculate 8,500+ institutional-quality digital asset prices and deliver a range of product solutions to navigate the cryptoverse.
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