How ieUnit is calculated

The basket – nine equal components

• Currencies: US dollar, euro, Japanese yen, Swiss franc, renminbi (China) – the five most important freely tradable reserve currencies in the world.
• Crypto assets: Bitcoin and Ethereum – the two largest and most liquid.
• Precious metals: gold and silver – the classic stores of value.

Each of these nine counts equally. None is more important than another.

Why these and no others? The selection follows clear rules: only freely tradable values with real market prices, and the most important of their kind. Deliberately excluded are individual project tokens (neutrality), smaller cryptocurrencies (too volatile) and metals like platinum (too industry-driven). For the renminbi we use the freely traded variant (CNH), not the state-managed one – otherwise the "free markets only" rule would be violated.

So that no value calls the tune – normalisation

A gram of gold costs many times more than a dollar. Simply adding up all prices would let the most expensive value dominate the whole index. That would not be an average – it would be a bet on gold.

That is why each of the nine values is initially scaled so that it contributes equally. Only then does each really count as one ninth. These quantities are fixed once and never touched again – only the market prices behind them move.

Why we calculate geometrically – not a simple average

This is the most important point, and we explain it openly because it is decisive for reliability.

A value can fall by at most 100 percent – below zero is impossible. Upwards there is no limit. A simple average therefore over-counts the big winners and is eventually ruled by them. One single value going through the roof would determine the entire index.

The geometric mean treats a doubling and a halving as equally heavy. A small example:

One value doubles (×2), another halves (×0.5).

– Simple average: (2 + 0.5) ÷ 2 = 1.25 → +25% – although nothing changed overall.

– Geometric mean: √(2 × 0.5) = 1.0 → 0% – correct, because double and half cancel out.

This is not a trick to make the numbers look good. It is the method used everywhere value developments are averaged – even official inflation statistics calculate this way. We chose it because it is right, not because the result pleases.

An honest word: It is tempting to think the maths was tweaked until it fit. The opposite is true. The principle came first – no value may crush the others. The method follows from it by necessity. And once the rules are set, they are frozen. Nobody keeps adjusting here. That is exactly what makes the measure reliable.

The starting point

ieUnit starts on 10 January 2017 with a value of 1.00. The date is deliberate: a fixed day in the past, not a cherry-picked high or low.

Starting in the past has two advantages: today ieUnit is no longer identical to the dollar, and there is a real, multi-year track record to look at from day one.

Where the prices come from

For each value we use several independent sources and take the middle price. If one source fails, it is simply dropped. Nothing depends on a single provider, and outliers carry no weight.

Prices are smoothed over time – no nervous flickering by the second, but calm, stable values. And there is no manual intervention: the rules calculate, not a person.

If the basket should ever change

The basket is meant to stay stable. Should it ever be adjusted – for instance because a currency that is not tradable today becomes tradable – rules apply that are fixed in advance: changes are rare, announced, and create no jump in the value (the new basket is chain-linked seamlessly to the old one, as with major stock indices). History is never recalculated, and every adjustment is documented openly. Every change stays predictable – never arbitrary.

See the evidence: the real track record since 2017 Technical documentation & backtest