NEW YORK — The wealth-generating hot streak for bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies has turned brutally cold.
As prices plunge, companies collapse and skepticism soars, fortunes and jobs are disappearing overnight, and investors’ feverish speculation has been replaced by icy calculation, in what industry leaders are referring to as a “crypto winter.”
It’s a dizzying turn of events for investments and companies that at the start of 2022 seemed to be at their financial and cultural apex. Crypto-evangelizing companies ran commercials during the Super Bowl and spent heavily to sponsor sports arenas and baseball teams. The industry’s combined assets were estimated to be worth more than $3 trillion; today, those assets are worth less than a third of that.