The entire crypto ecosystem has collapsed. It's time to stop pretending that it's ever going to come back.

Crypto has had its ups and downs and its bubbles and its crashes, but I think we all need to confront the fact that it's not going to come back this time.<br><br>Bitcoin is trading at ~$25k USD, down ~67% from its all time high of ~$69k in November 2021. The last time Bitcoin fell by 2/3rd's of its price took place between 2017 and 2018, and that collapse was the result of a pump and dump scheme. But while the crypto market did recover over the coming years and reach a much higher price in 2021, it seems highly unlikely that will happen again.<br><br>The most bullish thing you can say about crypto as a whole is that it's probably not going away **completely.** There will likely always be some niche of weirdos and nerds who see crypto as a viable alternative to traditional finance and who will use it to write smart contracts and to some level invest in it.<br><br>But crypto was more than just a weird little niche. It was a mania. The biggest mania in financial history. Something that made the tulip bubble look like a nothing more than a short lived and boring bear market.<br><br>Crypto was a story about how technology and individualism and the free market could all combine together to overthrow traditional finance and to democratize banking. It was a story about how crypto had solved the double-spend problem and how block chain technology was superior to traditional banking infrastructure. It was a story about how Bitcoin was digital gold, how it was going to be an inflation hedge, and how it was going to function as a viable store of value.<br><br>None of those things ended up being true. None of that ever actually functioned at a large scale. All of the promises that crypto ever made, where it actually able to deliver on them, it absolutely flopped.<br><br>The proof of work mining system never actually became environmentally friendly. It never really used anything but electricity. Miners remained in China and placed a huge burden on the Chinese environment, which in turn made China ban crypto.<br><br>The proof of stake mining system was never a viable alternative. With proof of stake mining, crypto users would stake their coins and participate in the creation of new blocks. That was supposed to be a way to get around the huge energy use, but what ended up happening was that staking led to huge centralization, where the biggest of crypto whales controlled the majority of the supply and used that control to dominate the mining process.<br><br>Crypto never became a viable store of value. It never became a hedge against inflation. There's no popular or widespread use of crypto in the real world. People do not use crypto to settle the majority of their transactions. Most business do not accept crypto as payment. Most banks do not have any way to crypto. Bitcoin is not widely recognized as money.<br><br>Crypto exchanges are not likely to become widely used. Robin hood is the only mainstream popular financial app that actually allows its users to buy and sell crypto and even then only through a small selection of coins. They don't let you transfer crypto off the app and into a wallet. The interface is that of a stock and not that of a currency. If you want to buy a large amount of crypto on robin hood, they have to file a SAR with FinCEN.<br><br>The amount of small start up crypto exchanges out there that have been hacked and drained and have filed for bankruptcy is endless. Gemini had to file for bankruptcy even though they are (or at least were) one of the biggest exchanges out there. Coinbase had to massively downsize and has had to lay off thousands of people. Binance held out the longest but even they are currently experiencing huge withdrawals and are likely to collapse in the near future.<br><br>Etherium's move to proof of stake had no positive effect on anything. The other coins that moved to proof of stake fared much worse.<br><br>Bitcoin had an opportunity to experience huge price spikes in 2022 and 2023. But it failed to capitalize on them. Bitcoin was sitting at ~$16k in the fall of 2022. FTX collapsed and Bitcoin dropped to ~$15k But FTX's collapse also had very little overall effect on Bitcoin's price. And as I write this, it is trading at ~$25k and is still down ~67% from it's all time high.<br><br>Crypto is not going to make a huge recovery. It's not going to surge back to it's all time high and beyond. I think it's value will stabilize and stay at this price for a while. But it will never go back to it's former glory. It is dead.