The deal is set to be announced at the Innotribe Future of Money session at the Sibos banking conference in Toronto, Thursday.

Stan Stalnaker, founding director of Hub Culture, says the arrangement with Thomson Reuters will "open new vistas for this currency with institutions across the planet. Live pricing on over half a million institutional desktops globally heralds a key step forward in the evolution of Ven."

Ven was launched in July 2007 by the nine-year-old social network and in 2009 became the first digital currency to move to a basket pricing structure, based on a portfolio of global currencies, commodities and carbon futures. In 2011, Ven became the first digital currency used in a commodity trading deal and in carbon credit trades.

Stalnaker says Ven's "transparent and stable nature" makes it a potential hedging tool for commodities around exchange rate volatility and a signal for market-led integrated carbon pricing at the global level.

He says Thomson Reuters Indices will act as the independent calculating agent for Ven, adding further depth and integrity to the currency.