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.

ETH closed the week above $2k, outperforming BTC after BlackRock filed for a spot ETH ETF. In other news, the CME Group overtook Binance as the largest BTC futures market by open interest, Poloniex suffered a $114mn hack, and JP Morgan launched programmable payments.

BTC traded above $35k this morning after remaining rangebound for much of the past two weeks. Meanwhile, PayPal faces a subpoena from the SEC over its new stablecoin, SBF was found guilty on all seven criminal fraud counts, and the new Celestia blockchain is off to a slow start.

Bitcoin is still trading at 16-month highs on the back of ETF speculation, diverging sharply from equity markets. Last week, SBF took the stand in an unusual turn of events while the FTX estate began evaluating offers to restart the exchange.