At the close of 2022, Bitcoin wasn’t just down—it was so down that its precipitous fall was breaking records. One report from Bank of America suggested that the collapse in value was the fifth-worst for any asset in financial history. Despite steady gains this year, it hasn’t even come close to its November 2021 peak, and now things are about to get shaken up like a bead in a baby’s rattle who’s just learned the fine art of throwing things.
It’s been just over a year since the beginning of the so-called “crypto winter”. There are myriad reasons for it, not least of which including this rampant inflation we’re all living through and the now-entrenched war in Ukraine, but there is another major factor at play—the collapse of supposed safe havens, the crypto exchanges. In the aftermath of their weakest moments, the impending gavel of regulation is now coming for what’s left of them.
