Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis has included prices of four top cryptocurrencies in its research database. The Feds announced the move on Tuesday, indicating that the Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED) will now include price data of Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum and Litecoin, provided by Coinbase.

The prices of four cryptocurrencies will be derived from Coinbase, a top US-based exchange. It will include historical data since 2014, and the current prices will be updated daily. The widely cited FRED’s inclusion of digital currencies marks a new beginning in US economic data.

The St. Louis Fed has been open to studies on cryptocurrencies previously. David Andolfatto, its then vice president, hosted a seminar on digital currencies in 2014 and suggested that this innovation “will force traditional institutions to adapt or die.”

He also shared his views in a presentation later in which he compared Bitcoin with gold and said that forecasting changes in the price of an asset is “difficult.” He also explained that as far as the identities of digital wallets holding Bitcoins are concerned, they are “disguised.” In this sense, according to him, Bitcoins can be compared with USD cash “in facilitating illegal trades.” However, he said that USD cash transaction histories are not publicly available, but wallet histories are. He also explained the concept of taxation and the central bank’s role in the system, among other things.

More recently, the president of St. Louis Fed, James Bullard, said that the US is moving toward non-uniform currency systems. He said:

“Cryptocurrencies are creating drift toward a non-uniform currency in the U.S., a state of affairs that has existed historically but was disliked and eventually replaced.”

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