Gerald Epstein in the Boston Review:
Without Donald Trump, the crypto industry would have met a very different fate. In the years before his second presidential campaign kicked off, crypto markets were undergoing a series of downturns that, if not necessarily spelling cryptocurrency’s death knell, were threatening to dramatically weaken the standing of an asset class that had minted a new generation of economic elites, relegating it to the status of a niche object for the likes of tech hobbyists, online gamblers, and drug dealers. 2022 in particular was such a bad time for crypto that commentators started to refer to it as a “crypto winter.” The value of Bitcoin—the cryptocurrency that, back in 2009, gave birth to the crypto revolution in the first place—had skyrocketed in the few preceding years, but in November 2022 it fell precipitously, taking down many crypto initiates with it. Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX, at its peak the third-largest crypto exchange in the world, collapsed, and Bankman-Fried and his friends were arrested. Apart from the most enthusiastic keepers of the faith, few were predicting a turnaround anytime soon.
But by the fall of 2025, crypto was booming again.
More here.
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