Bruce Traan is a 15+ year veteran of the Cboe who had jumped into the crypto world, but now has created his own firm to bring fairness in pricing to firms needing the licensing services of an index provider. The uneven pricing of the index provider world is what he seeks to solve with his new enterprise, BenchMarket.

Traan saw this problem with his own eyes when he was involved with incubating Cboe Global Indexes, he said.

After leaving Cboe, he joined CoinMetrics as chief index officer. His new firm, BenchMarket, is a peer-to-peer global marketplace for index licensing. 

We asked him about his experience with the crypto space. He said he believes the crypto world still has legs to grow despite the recent issues.

JLN also asked him why he started his own firm. He said it was something he had been thinking about for a long time. There is a need for efficiency and innovation in the licensing business. He is trying to reimagine the market from a one-to-one to a one-to-many and lower the cost.

He is not disrupting the market, but innovating access to it, he said. 

He said that if BenchMarket can get enough ETF and fund administrators to join, then there will be a more economical discussion about licensing. 

The proliferation of passive investments has created a need for benchmarks, which makes the need for more efficiency in licensing that much more important, he said.

There are some licensors who don’t follow IOSCO principles, so BenchMarket can help build trust in the governance as well as lowering costs. 

BenchMarket is looking to launch in the first quarter of 2023, Traan said. So far the company is self-funded, but as it needs to address larger issues, it will look to raise capital, he said.