The New York Stock Exchange is diving deeper into the world of Bitcoin with the introduction of a bitcoin pricing index.

The index, which will be made available through NYSE's Global Index Feed and free on its website for a limited time, is intended to serve as a definitive benchmark for valuing the currency — in the same way that the LIBOR index is used to measure global interest rates.

"We are now going to use our name, reputation and global index provider stature to provide bitcoin values that the rest of the market can look to," says Tom Farley, who serves as president of NYSE, the venerable financial institution that has come to symbolize Wall Street and capitalism more broadly.

It's a feature with a backstory that stretches back years. Around the time that the price of bitcoin first began its remarkable rise in late 2012 and early 2013, Farley was approached by two men from Europe who pitched their plans to launch a bitcoin exchange. Farley had heard generally about bitcoin before, but he decided to devote a weekend to heavily researching the new digital currency.

"I left at the end of that weekend thinking this thing might have legs," Farley recalls. "We need to keep an eye on this stuff."

That weekend helped kickstart Farley's quiet push to find the 223-year-old stock exchange an early entry point into the still controversial and uncertain world of bitcoin. At the beginning of this year, NYSE raised more than a few eyebrows by investing in Coinbase, a popular bitcoin wallet. The new bitcoin pricing index marks its first in-house product.

Other outfits, including the Bloomberg terminal and Google, track the price of bitcoin relative to other currencies, but Farley insists NYSE has the potential to create the gold standard for bitcoin values (not to mix asset classes).

Not your great-great-grandfather's New York Stock Exchange

The real origin of the stock exchange's interest in bitcoin dates back to 2012 when Intercontinental Exchange, or ICE, agreed to acquire NYSE for $8.2 billion. The blockbuster acquisition put a centuries-old exchange — with floor traders who still called out stock trades — under the control of a 12-year-old energy market with a native approach to digital financial transactions.

More to the point: It put NYSE under the control of ICE founder Jeff Sprecher and his right-hand man Tom Farley.

Farley, 39, got his start as a financial technology banker in the late 1990s amid the tech boom, before launching his own cloud-based risk management company and getting approached by Sprecher in 2006 to work with him. Sprecher made Farley the president of NYSE last year, making him the second youngest man to ever hold that position. He set to work modernizing the organization.

"New technology does not intimidate us, it excites us," Farley says, effectively summing up the new mindset of NYSE. Bitcoin in particular excited him, both because of the interest in the currency and the blockchain technology behind it, which serves as a transaction database. "It was that curiosity and also... let's not wait for this to fully evolve; let's get a seat early on and see how this matures."

A year ago, Farley was put in touch with Coinbase, one of the best funded bitcoin startups, and began laying the groundwork for a possible investment. He says the NYSE would consider similar investments.

"With bitcoin, you don’t have to make a particularly huge investment in order to have the right seat at the table, in order to do some skunk works development, in order to stay abreast of the technology," he says.

The finance world embraces bitcoin

NYSE is among the most notable financial institutions embracing bitcoin to some extent, but it's far from the only one.

The Nasdaq, a rival stock exchange, this month began using bitcoin's blockchain technology. Goldman Sachs took part in a $50 million funding round last month for Circle, a bitcoin startup looking to make it easier for businesses and consumers to use the currency. And Larry Summers, the former U.S. Treasury Secretary, recently joined the board of secretive bitcoin startup 21.

Each of those overtures from big names adds a little more credibility to the rocky currency at a time when the price has swooned to the low $200-range, from its lofty highs of more than $1,000 per bitcoin at the end of 2013. That decline followed the collapse of one of the largest bitcoin exchanges, Mt. Gox, and concerns over regulations. Some might argue that the lower price and notable backing could lead to greater stability going forward.

Even so, there is always the chance that the whole currency could one day just go bust — but Farley says NYSE will deal with that outcome if it happens.

"We’re willing to make some investments and even take on some risk earlier in the lifecycle of a new technology than some of our competitors," he says. "The benefit is when we get it right, we get it real right. When we get it wrong, the idea is to get to that answer as quickly as possible and move on."

Disclosure: I own 0.5 bitcoin.