Kaiko’s 2023 Year in Review

January 3rd, 2024 — Paris

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2023 served as a crucial reset for the crypto industry. At Kaiko, we took the year as an opportunity to continue working towards our core mission: to provide trusted information from all markets, on all networks. 

Most importantly, we prepared for a strong 2024 turnaround. Throughout the year:

We built products for the next wave of institutional investors.

We prepared for new regulatory requirements.

We made crypto data easier.

And the hard work appears to have paid off: Bitcoin closed the year as one of the best performing financial assets and we very well could be witnessing the start of a new bull run. Let’s dive in.

We built data products for the next wave of institutional investors.

The possible approval of a bitcoin spot ETF is today the single biggest catalyst in crypto markets. Regulated investment products are the next frontier of crypto investing and in 2023 we worked hard to develop the data to power these products.

In February, we launched our first batch of BMR-compliant Reference Rates, designed to serve as the underlying for ETPs and derivatives. We closed several major derivatives exchanges as clients who will leverage our rates for settlement (look out for our announcements in January). To expand the utility of these rates, we partnered with TP ICAP, one of the leading providers of FX market data, to provide additional fiat currency conversions.

We are also proud to have partnered with Cboe Digital, a U.S.-regulated crypto  exchange, to construct custom Reference Rates for their BTC and ETH margined futures due to launch on January 11th.

Finally, we launched Blue Chip Indices, tracking the top 5, 10, and 15 digital assets. This suite of indices is designed to empower financial product issuers and investment professionals with a trusted benchmark for crypto markets.

View all of our Rates and Indices on our new live dashboard

We prepared for new regulatory requirements.

In December, the FASB published rules for crypto accounting which will become mandatory for businesses by year-end, requiring a Fair Market Value accounting approach for crypto assets. This means that all enterprises that hold crypto on their balance sheet will need auditable price data for valuation.

In June, we launched Robust Pair Prices, a new crypto pricing service designed to provide clean, outlier-resistant, and IFRS/GAAP-compliant prices, enabling businesses to stay compliant with these new requirements.

We also launched Wallet Data, a data product that provides an account-like description of every single blockchain wallet’s token holdings over time. This product is designed for auditors to conduct due diligence on a business or exchange’s token holdings, and can also help regulators improve market oversight.

Finally, we achieved SOC2 Type II accreditation, another milestone in our ongoing journey of maintaining a high level of security and reliability standards.

We made crypto data easier.

We have long been the leading provider of granular trade and order book data. However, as our clientele grows and additional use cases emerge, we have begun expanding our product suite to account for all levels of data users.

In 2023 we launched two data products designed for researchers to help ease the analysis of crypto assets and exchanges.

Asset Metrics is perhaps one of the most powerful data products in the crypto industry, aggregating millions of trade and order book data points, and applying a USD conversion. With one API endpoint, anyone can analyze liquidity for an asset across all pairs and all exchanges, including information about its on-chain holders.

Exchange Metrics enables seamless analysis of trade volume on a crypto exchange, also with a simple USD conversion.

Finally, we expanded the ways in which clients can access our products, with data now available through Google BigQuery. BigQuery enables users to manipulate data with simple SQL commands, without having to handle storage.

Looking Ahead

Going into 2024, we have much to look forward to in the industry: the possible approval of a spot ETF as soon as January, a more positive macro environment, a pick-up in DeFi activity, new tokenization initiatives, and much-needed regulatory clarity.

The crypto industry has a rich and rapidly growing data ecosystem, but there remain challenges when it comes to balancing quality with coverage. Since 2014, we’ve made it our mission to tackle the crypto data problem and are proud of the progress we have made this year.

Ultimately, nothing would have been possible without the support of our stellar team, clients, partners and investors. Thank you all, we look forward to 2024, we wish you a very happy new year!

Ambre Soubiran and the Kaiko Team