It's a well-known market phenomenon: Stocks tend to go up at the very end of the year, and then again in the first few days of the new year. In fact, this phenomenon is so famous that it even has a name: the Santa Claus Rally. The size and extent of this rally is often used to predict how the market will perform over the next year.

The crypto market, though, has something even better than the Santa Claus Rally as a predictor of performance. There are two big events coming in the first few months of the year that could have a profound impact on the future trajectory of Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) and other cryptocurrencies. Let's take a look.

The first major event is the arrival of a spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) for the U.S. market. Yes, there are already Bitcoin ETF products in the market today, but these use financial derivatives (e.g., futures contracts) to track the price of Bitcoin, and can be unpredictable or inaccurate at times.

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Source Fool.com