Everyone woke up today and checked the price… great price indeed. For the first time since the November 2021 pico-top, BTC traded above $60K. A truly remarkable feat when you look back to where markets were just 12 months ago.

As the great Bob Dylan would say, “the times, they are a changin”.

Over the years, you may have seen people refer to the ‘premium’, or the ‘Coinbase premium’. This simply refers to the difference between the Coinbase BTCUSD price and the Binance BTCUSDT price.

With the approval of the BTC Spot ETF in January 2024, US domestic markets will become even more important and influential when it comes to overall price movements.

We’ve already seen this in futures markets as the CME has become the largest futures exchange by OI. We likely will see a similar trend with spot markets and exchanges as well, with Coinbase being a prime beneficiary.

In the above chart, we have BTC price since 2023, with the Coinbase premium plotted below. Post FTX, general bullish trends have been accompanied by strong Coinbase premiums, which again has been the case on this most recent surge towards $60K.

We can see this dynamic more clearly on the lower timeframe chart above, beginning January 2024.

This is an indicator that I will be paying attention too throughout the duration of this market cycle as traditional finance capital continues to make its way into spot markets via Coinbase.