WinkDex launches developer API

In another sign that the Winklevoss Bitcoin Trust is marching steadily towards Securities and Exchange Commission approval, the trust’s proprietary index, the WinkDex, officially opened its API to developers today. The WinkDex is a blended index created specifically for pricing the Winklevoss twins’ exchange traded fund for would-be investors. The API has been available to developers on an invite-only basis since the index’s launch in February.

The API is fairly standard, allowing developers to access most of the functionality of the WinkDex itself. This will prove useful for developers building bitcoin apps, although there are many other sources for such data.

Speaking with Fortune, Cameron Winklevoss said that while the main function of the WinkDex was for use in his company’s EFT, he hopes to see the index gain a following. “We’ve spent a lot of time trying to build a really cool tool,” Cameron Winklevoss said. “Obviously the index will be big for us because it will be used to price any future ETF. But we also wanted to build on this for the betterment of the Bitcoin community.”

Although the WinkDex pricing formula isn’t inherently more accurate than any other index, being simply an adjusted average price from the three major exchanges, as the official price index of the WBT it would become an increasingly important source for the “true” price of bitcoin should the ETF actually launch.