Noob question. Is there a standard index for cyptocurrencies?

[BardBard]

I'm new to this and trying to do research on learning more about bitcoin and altcoins. How is the exchange rate for cpyto gauged in a standardized manner?
Is there something like a dow jones for cyptocurrencies?  I heard a lot of discussion on the volatility of the value of cyptocurrencies but didn't know where to look to find history of value or find trending price ticker on a trustworthy source. I find too many results and not sure which is misinformation or is trustworthy.

[DdmrDdmr]

Checkout https://coinmarketcap.com/ and https://coinmarketcap.com/rankings/exchanges/ . Although there has been a lot of talk aout how the exchanges feed their information to Coinmarketcap, inflating trading volumes, it’s a ground cero to start to understand the numbers.

[bitmover]

There are some indexes

Coinbase has its index.
I don't like coinbase index because it ignores ripple, which had about 5% of market share.

https://am.coinbase.com/

Current Composition
Bitcoin   83.00%
Ethereum   10.76%
Bitcoin Cash   2.51%
Litecoin   2.49%
Zcash   0.60%
Ethereum Classic   0.30%
Basic Attention Token   0.16%

Also bitwise investment
https://www.bitwiseinvestments.com/indexes/Bitwise-10

They have top10, top20, top70, top100 by maeketcap.

top10 bitwise
Bitcoin 76.43%
Ethereum 8.96%
XRP 5.85%
Litecoin 2.52%
Bitcoin Cash 2.33%
EOS 1.56%
Stellar 0.67%
Monero 0.59%
Cardano 0.56%
Dash 0.51%

All indexes should be compared to Bitcoin performance. Be careful when analysing this past data, because indexes all have a worst performance than bitcoin in the past year . Looking the graphics, 3-5years ago the indexes performance was much better than btc.

[NeuroticFish]

Is there something like a dow jones for cyptocurrencies?

Composite indexes are not too common for crypto, especially because most of them you can buy only if you buy Bitcoin first.

Bitcoin: if you trust more the stock exchanges, maybe you will prefer to look for Bitcoin as NYXBT (NYSE), although the most indicator for Bitcoin current median price is preev.com
And for all the coins, coinmarketcap.com is the most used website.