Q1 2024: Five stories that shaped cryptocurrency
Quarterly retrospective covering January 1–March 31, 2024. Dated March 31, 2024. Stories selected for market impact, policy significance, and consequences for cryptocurrency infrastructure.
1. The SEC approves U.S. spot Bitcoin products
The SEC approved the listing and trading of spot Bitcoin exchange-traded products on January 10, and the new funds began trading the following day. The decision opened a major route for obtaining Bitcoin exposure through ordinary securities accounts and brought prominent asset managers into direct competition over fees and distribution. It was a structural change in investment access after years of rejected applications. The SEC chairman emphasised that authorising the products did not amount to endorsing Bitcoin or removing the risks associated with the underlying asset. Sources: SEC chairman’s statement, January 10, Associated Press, January 11.
2. Dencun introduces blob data to Ethereum
Ethereum activated Dencun on March 13, introducing EIP-4844 and a new way for rollups to publish transaction data through blobs. The upgrade targeted a major cost in layer-two operation and represented an important step in Ethereum’s rollup-focused scaling strategy. Its significance lay in changing the economics of data availability rather than simply increasing the number of ordinary transactions processed by the base layer. Applications and infrastructure providers gained a new data channel, with the impact on individual users depending on adoption and pricing by their chosen networks. Source: The Block, March 13.
3. Bitcoin surpasses its previous market high
Bitcoin set a new nominal record on March 5, with Coinbase recording a price above $69,000 before a sharp retreat. The milestone arrived after the launch of U.S. spot products and ahead of the expected April halving, bringing investment demand and the supply schedule into the same market narrative. The record also marked a recovery from the failures and depressed prices of the previous cycle. Prices varied between venues and the pullback showed that reaching a new high did not remove the market’s capacity for rapid intraday reversals. Source: Axios, March 5.
4. Sam Bankman-Fried receives a 25-year sentence
Sam Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison on March 28 following his 2023 conviction for fraud and conspiracy connected to FTX and Alameda. The sentence brought a major phase of the criminal case to a conclusion while the exchange’s bankruptcy and asset-recovery work continued separately. For the cryptocurrency industry, it was a significant accountability milestone after a failure that had damaged customers and confidence in centralised platforms. The criminal punishment and the eventual value or timing of creditor distributions remained different legal and financial questions. Source: U.S. Department of Justice, March 28.
5. Solana’s February outage tests network reliability
Solana’s mainnet halted block finalisation on February 6 and required a coordinated restart. Anza’s incident report described a software problem involving programme loading and the steps taken by engineers and validators to restore operation. The interruption put reliability alongside speed and low transaction costs in assessments of the network. For businesses using a blockchain as infrastructure, the event showed why client maintenance, incident communication, and recovery procedures matter: applications depend on the chain continuing to produce and finalise blocks, not just on its performance during normal operation. Source: Anza outage report published by Solana, February 9.