These 5 stocks are featured in a new blockchain index - and they're all on a tear

AP Photo/George Frey

Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne.

• Reality Shares and Nasdaq announced the launch of an index to track companies in the booming blockchain industry.
• Blockchain, the technology underlying cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin and ethereum, has become a popular buzzword on Wall Street as the prices of digital coins and tokens continue to climb.
• The Reality Shares Nasdaq Blockchain Economy Index includes a wide-range of companies across sectors.
  

Exchange operator Nasdaq and Reality Shares, an investment marketplace, unveiled a new index on Monday designed to capture the growth of blockchain technology.

The smart-beta index called the Reality Shares Nasdaq Blockchain Economy Index, is planned to provide the basis for an exchange-traded fund by Reality Shares, according to a press release about the new index. The ETF has already been filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission by Reality Shares.

Blockchain is best known for being the technology underlying cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, but it could have applications outside of cryptocurrencies.

Jonathan Johnson, the head of Medici Ventures, a VC subsidiary of Overstock, a company in the index, told Business Insider blockchain could potentially have the same kind of impact as the internet.

"We see blockchain doing for the transfer of value what the internet did for the transfer of info and we want to be at the front of that wave of innovation and change," Johnson said.

As a decentralized ledger, blockchain can facilitate exchanges of assets without the need of a middle-man. As such, it has gripped the attention of Wall Street with companies such as Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, and Morgan Stanley all participating in at least one blockchain consortium.

But the new index includes a wide-range of companies, according to Reality Shares. Following are five companies featured on the index's site.