January 10th marks the final day that the SEC can take a decision on Ark’s spot ETF and no matter the outcome, there will likely be more volatility. BTC was one of the only crypto assets to close the week up after a dramatic price crash that triggered hundreds of millions of liquidations.

Throughout 2023, Kaiko Research published more than 800 charts exploring the highs and lows of crypto. Today, we take a look back at 10 charts that we believe define the year.

Markets pulled back slightly last week, with BTC now trading at just under $41k after the SEC denied Coinbase’s rule-making petition and Ledger suffered a major exploit of its Web3 connector, impacting dAPPs for many popular DeFi protocols.

BTC is trading just below $42k as speculation mounts that the Fed could soon start cutting interest rates. Last week, Société Générale listed its euro stablecoin on Bitstamp, memecoins saw a surge in activity, and Robinhood rolled out crypto trading in the EU.

BTC broke $41k in the early hours of Monday, hitting its highest level since April 2022. Meanwhile, MicroStrategy boosted its BTC holdings, U.S. inflation softened more than expected, and Binance said it will soon end support for BUSD.

Last week the U.S. Justice Department’s investigation of Binance finally came to a close with the exchange agreeing to pay $4.3bn in penalties and its CEO Changpeng Zhao stepping down and pleading guilty. Additionally, the SEC charged Kraken for running an unregistered securities exchange.

Bitcoin was range-bound last week despite a market-wide rally on the back of weaker-than-expected inflation data. In other news, OpenAI fired its CEO Sam Altman, the SEC expectedly delayed a decision on three spot ETFs and the Philippines sold $270mn tokenized treasury bonds.

As markets rally and demand for leverage increases, high-quality price data is more important than ever. Today, we explore why pricing methodologies can have a big impact on derivatives markets.