Bitcoin crossed $45,000 as a U.S. spot-ETF decision neared

Bitcoin crossed $45,000 on January 2, 2024, reaching $45,922 on Bitstamp, according to contemporaneous market reports that identified the instrument as the exchange’s BTC/USD spot pair. The print was Bitcoin’s highest since April 2022 and made the first full trading session of 2024 a visible test of how strongly expectations for a U.S. spot-bitcoin exchange-traded product had entered the market.

The verified development is the price milestone, not the explanation attached to it. Reuters and Cointelegraph both reported the same $45,922 Bitstamp high on January 2. Both connected the rally to anticipation that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission might approve pending spot-bitcoin products. That connection was a contemporaneous interpretation. A price series alone cannot prove which buyers acted for that reason or separate ETF expectations from broader liquidity, positioning or macroeconomic factors.

What the market record shows

Bitstamp’s public API defines daily OHLC candles for BTC/USD and identifies the fields as open, high, low, close and volume. For this reconstruction, the relevant measurement is the intraday high reported for the January 2, 2024 UTC session: $45,922 for one bitcoin quoted in U.S. dollars on Bitstamp. This is a venue-specific trade record, not a universal bitcoin price.

That limitation matters because bitcoin trades continuously across exchanges. Venues can print slightly different highs, and a “daily” move depends on the selected exchange, quote currency and time boundary. Coinburn therefore does not combine the Bitstamp high with an open or closing value from a different provider, and it does not calculate a daily percentage change from mismatched datasets.

The historical comparison is also narrowly framed. Contemporaneous reports called $45,922 a 21-month high and the first move above $45,000 since April 2022. Those descriptions establish how unusual the level was relative to the preceding market period; they do not make $45,000 a technical guarantee or a measure of fundamental value.

Why the ETF question mattered

The rally arrived after a major change in the legal backdrop. On August 29, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit granted Grayscale Investments’ petition for review and vacated the SEC order rejecting the proposed conversion of Grayscale Bitcoin Trust. The court concluded that the agency had not adequately explained its different treatment of comparable spot- and futures-based products.

That ruling did not itself approve Grayscale’s conversion or any competing fund. It required the agency to revisit the matter. By January 2, 2024, multiple exchange-rule proposals and registration statements remained under review, so an approval scenario had become institutionally plausible without becoming certain. The market milestone mattered because it showed that regulatory expectations were being expressed in the spot price before any final Commission action.

What remained unknown on January 2

Nothing in the January 2 price record established that the SEC had made a decision, that every application would receive the same treatment, or that a listed product would attract a particular amount of capital. It also did not establish who bought at the high, whether the move was durable, or whether ETF anticipation was the sole cause.

The distinction is especially important in a continuously traded, leveraged market: a sharp move can reflect spot demand, derivatives positioning, liquidations and thin order books at the same time. Without a defined cross-venue dataset and order-level attribution, claims about the rally’s complete cause would exceed the evidence.

Later context

On January 10, 2024, the SEC approved exchange rule changes permitting 11 spot-bitcoin exchange-traded products to list and trade. That later action confirms that the regulatory question driving January 2 expectations was real, but it must not be projected backward: on January 2, approval remained pending, and the $45,922 print recorded anticipation rather than a completed regulatory outcome.