The Long Winter: A Timeline of Crypto’s Implosion

Plus, a review of a very strange fintech book.

Number of the Week: 12,100 (explanation below)

The Long Winter: A Timeline of Crypto’s Implosion

This week marks FIN’s two-year anniversary, and we are extremely grateful to the millions of readers we’ve been able to reach over that time. An analogy that’s been front of mind lately: the first issue of WIRED magazine was published in March 1993. In no place does that issue mention the Internet, a technology that would, um, shortly become important to the publication’s mission. Similarly, the first four installments of FIN did not mention Bitcoin or cryptocurrency. It wasn’t exactly an intentional omission or lack of interest; it’s more like, two years ago, cryptocurrency seemed like a separate realm. Of course you could devote a newsletter to just crypto (many do!), but it didn’t feel intrinsically connected to the companies and technology that FIN set out to cover. Even as early as November 2020, that changed.

The funny thing is that half of that two-year period has been a chronicle of crypto’s vertiginous decline. In a matter of weeks, two trillion dollars worth of crypto market capitalization were wiped off the ledger. The hows and the whys will be debated for years, but here is a timeline of the year of crypto plunge.