The key economic graphs that define 2023
How to sum up a year like 2023?
Perhaps the best thing to say is that it was considerably less exciting – as far as the economics went – than 2022.
And that’s probably no bad thing, because in 2022 much of what passed for excitement was extremely painful: the onset of a cost of living crisis which caused the biggest fall in British standards of living in modern record, a financial meltdown in the wake of Liz Truss‘s mini-budget.
The plan, when Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt came into office, was always to make the economy boring again, and to some extent they succeeded.
Most obviously, while the government’s cost of borrowing did later rise to above the Truss era levels, it was largely down to higher inflation expectations and not to fears over the credibility of UK government policy.
This time last year, most people assumed – present company included – that 2023 would be a year of recession for the UK.
And for much of the year that’s precisely what it looked like.
France and Germany both tipped into technical recession (the definition of which is that you suffer two successive quarters of economic contraction). The UK was expected to do likewise.
Economic growth
But somehow, it never happened.
At least, not quite.
Instead, the economy more or less flatlined for most of the year – though figures published by the Office for National Statistics just before Christmas showed the economy contracted slightly, by 0.1% in the third quarter.
Either way, this can hardly be held up as a positive result. Normally you’d expect the UK’s gross domestic product to grow by around 2-2.5% each year.
However, a negligible amount of economic growth is more than most expected this year – even if (see below) it was helped by a colossal increase in migration.
Technically, this meant the prime minister met one of his much-publicised pledges he made to the country at the start of the year – to grow the economy.
As you can see from the chart, this isn’t much to boast about, especially set against the pre-pandemic path, but it is certainly better than what many other European countries experienced.
The Cost of Living
Another of the prime minister’s pledges was to halve inflation this year.
At the time he made it, this pledge looked pretty unspectacular, given a) controlling inflation is the Bank of England‘s task, not the government’s and, anyway, b) pretty much every economist was expecting inflation to halve this year anyway.
But over the course of the year inflation defied many of those economists’ forecasts, with the upshot that by the summer that pledge looked quite risky.
But then, no sooner had inflation surprised on the upside, it surprised on the downside, falling faster than most economists expected.
By the end of the year the consumer price index rate of inflation was down to 3.9% which is nearly in “normal” territory, albeit considerably higher than the Bank of England’s 2% target.
But while that meant the rate was indeed halved (actually more than halved) over the year, this hardly ends the cost of living crisis.
After all, inflation is simply the rate at which prices are changing each year. And right now prices are still 15% higher than they were a couple of years ago.
It’s that jump in levels which is causing severe economic hardship right now.
Life is not getting any less expensive. It’s just getting expensive a little slower than it was a year or so ago.
Interest rates
It’s tempting to lump interest rates along with the other things that didn’t turn out as bad as expected, but here the story is more complicated.
True: rates never rose to the 6% highs that were once expected around the time of the Truss mini-budget and also during the inflation spike during the Hunt chancellorship.
But they nonetheless rose far higher than most had expected at the start of the year, up to a peak of 5.25%. As the year ended, the Bank was still insisting that they would stay up there for some time (and some members were still voting for higher rates) but most investors believe they will be cut numerous times in the new year – down as far as 4% by the end of the year.
That has a bearing on the mortgage rates most of us pay, since fixed-rate mortgages are mostly priced off what’s going on in financial markets rather than the Bank’s official rate. The upshot was that the going rate for two and five-year fixed-rate mortgages were falling sharply by the end of the year.
Tax burden
Another hot topic this year was taxation.
The government insisted repeatedly that it wants to bring it down, and in the Autumn Statement, the chancellor announced a series of cuts to both workers’ taxes and taxes on business investment.
The upshot was that the tax burden wasn’t due to rise as high as it might otherwise have done.
However, the overall burden is still due to hit the highest level since the 1940s, in large part because of the fact that the levels at which people are pulled into higher tax bands has been frozen.
Higher wage inflation (due to the cost of living crisis) means more people are seeing their earnings taxed at those higher levels.
This so-called “fiscal drag” means the nation is shifting from being a medium-tax country to a high-tax country.
But so too are most developed nations, as the cost of running expensive healthcare systems rises, along with the average age of their populations.
Migration
While the government spent much of its energy talking about illegal immigration and the boats coming across the channel, the real quantitative story here was actually legal migration, which rose, according to the data released this year, to an unprecedented level of 745,000 in 2022.
That rise was extraordinary by any standards.
When looked at as a share of the population, it amounts to comfortably the biggest rise in net migration since records began. And, strikingly, experts said that this was primarily a consequence of the new rules brought in after Brexit, which made it easier for workers and students from outside Europe to come to Britain.
Migration might have been a big issue during the EU referendum, but the numbers today are considerably higher than they were back then – but Britain has swapped EU migrants with those from outside the continent – primarily from India and China.
A group of investors with cryptocurrency custody and trading firm Bakkt Holdings filed a class-action lawsuit alleging false or misleading statements and a failure to disclose certain information.
Lead plaintiff Guy Serge A. Franklin called for a jury trial as part of a complaint against Bakkt, senior adviser and former CEO Gavin Michael, CEO and president Andrew Main, and interim chief financial officer Karen Alexander, according to an April 2 filing in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York.
The group of investors allege damages as the result of violations of US securites laws and a lack of transparency surrounding its agreement with clients: Webull and Bank of America (BoA).
April 2 complaint against Bakkt and its executives. Source: PACER
The loss of Bank of America and Webull will result “in a 73% loss in top line revenue” due to the two firms making up a significant percentage of its services revenue, the investor group alleges in the lawsuit. The filing stated Webull made up 74% of Bakkt’s crypto services revenue through most of 2023 and 2024, and Bank of America made up 17% of its loyalty services revenue from January to September 2024.
Related: Bakkt names new co-CEO amid re-focus on crypto offerings
Bakkt disclosed on March 17 that Bank of America and Webull did not intend to renew their agreements with the firm ending in 2025. The announcement likely contributed to the company’s share price falling more than 27% in the following 24 hours. The investors allege Bakkt “misrepresented the stability and/or diversity of its crypto services revenue” and failed to disclose that this revenue was “substantially dependent” on Webull’s contract.
“As a result of Defendants’ wrongful acts and omissions, and the precipitous decline in the market value of the Company’s securities, Plaintiff and other Class members have suffered significant losses and damages,” said the suit.
Other law offices said they were investigating Bakkt for securities law violations, suggesting additional class-action lawsuits may be in the works. Cointelegraph contacted Bakkt for a comment on the lawsuit but did not receive a response at the time of publication.
Prices affected by Trump Media reports
Bakkt’s share price surged roughly 162% in November 2024 after reports suggested that then-US President-elect Donald Trump’s media company was considering acquiring the firm. As of April 2025, neither company has officially announced a deal.
Shares in Bakkt (BKKT) were $8.15 at the time of publication, having fallen more than 36% in the previous 30 days.
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The new trade tariffs announced by US President Donald Trump may place added pressure on the Bitcoin mining ecosystem both domestically and globally, according to one industry executive.
While the US is home to Bitcoin (BTC) mining manufacturing firms such as Auradine, it’s still “not possible to make the whole supply chain, including materials, US-based,” Kristian Csepcsar, chief marketing officer at BTC mining tech provider Braiins, told Cointelegraph.
On April 2, Trump announced sweeping tariffs, imposing a 10% tariff on all countries that export to the US and introducing “reciprocal” levies targeting America’s key trading partners.
Community members have debated the potential effects of the tariffs on Bitcoin, with some saying their impact has been overstated, while others see them as a significant threat.
Tariffs compound existing mining challenges
Csepcsar said the mining industry is already experiencing tough times, pointing to key indicators like the BTC hashprice.
Hashprice — a measure of a miner’s daily revenue per unit of hash power spent to mine BTC blocks — has been on the decline since 2022 and dropped to all-time lows of $50 for the first time in 2024.
According to data from Bitbo, the BTC hashprice was still hovering around all-time low levels of $53 on March 30.
Bitcoin hashprice since late 2013. Source: Bitbo
“Hashprice is the key metric miners follow to understand their bottom line. It is how many dollars one terahash makes a day. A key profitability metric, and it is at all-time lows, ever,” Csepcsar said.
He added that mining equipment tariffs were already increasing under the Biden administration in 2024, and cited comments from Summer Meng, general manager at Chinese crypto mining supplier Bitmars.
Source: Summer Meng
“But they keep getting stricter under Trump,” Csepcsar added, referring to companies such as the China-based Bitmain — the world’s largest ASIC manufacturer — which is subject to the new tariffs.
Trump’s latest measures include a 34% additional tariff on top of an existing 20% levy for Chinese mining imports. In response, China reportedly imposed its own retaliatory tariffs on April 4.
BTC mining firms to “lose in the short term”
Csepcsar also noted that cutting-edge chips for crypto mining are currently massively produced in countries like Taiwan and South Korea, which were hit by new 32% and 25% tariffs, respectively.
“It will take a decade for the US to catch up with cutting-edge chip manufacturing. So again, companies, including American ones, lose in the short term,” he said.
Source: jmhorp
Csepcsar also observed that some countries in the Commonwealth of Independent States region, including Russia and Kazakhstan, have been beefing up mining efforts and could potentially overtake the US in hashrate dominance.
Related: Bitcoin mining using coal energy down 43% since 2011 — Report
“If we continue to see trade war, these regions with low tariffs and more favorable mining conditions can see a major boom,” Csepcsar warned.
As the newly announced tariffs potentially hurt Bitcoin mining both globally and in the US, it may become more difficult for Trump to keep his promise of making the US the global mining leader.
Trump’s stance on crypto has shifted multiple times over the years. As his administration embraces a more pro-crypto agenda, it remains to be seen how the latest economic policies will impact his long-term strategy for digital assets.
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Cryptocurrency exchange OKX is under renewed regulatory scrutiny in Europe after Maltese authorities issued a major fine for violations of Anti-Money Laundering (AML) laws.
Malta’s Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit (FIAU) fined Okcoin Europe — OKX’s Europe-based subsidiary — 1.1 million euros ($1.2 million) after detecting multiple AML failures on the platform in the past, the authority announced on April 3.
While admitting that OKX has significantly improved its AML policies in the past 18 months, the authority “could not ignore” its past compliance failures from 2023, “some of which were deemed to be serious and systematic,” the FIAU notice said.
OKX was among the first crypto exchanges to receive a license under Europe’s new Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation via its Malta hub in January 2025.
The news of the $1.2 million penalty in Malta came after Bloomberg in March reported that European Union regulators were probing OKX for laundering $100 million in funds from the Bybit hack.
Bybit CEO Ben Zhou previously claimed that OKX’s Web3 proxy allowed hackers to launder about $100 million, or 40,233 Ether (ETH), from the $1.5 billion hack that occurred in February.
This is a developing story, and further information will be added as it becomes available.
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