CryptoMarshal.Monty

People keep asking me: What was worse - 2022 or whatever we’re in right now? Here’s my answer: 2022 wasn’t a downturn. It was an industry collapse. - Terra/LUNA - 3AC - Celsius - Voyager - BlockFi - FTX/Alameda - Genesis - …plus dozens of desks and DAOs that vanished quietly. And we forget how many giants everyone thought were going to collapse next: Grayscale, Tether, Coinbase, Binance, Crypto dot com, Gemini, USDC, DCG - all under active fear. Nearly everyone had some exposure. And everyone thought something they relied on was insolvent. Now compare that to 2025: a slow bleed. Annoying, draining, uncomfortable - but without a single systemic domino falling. Prices have drifted lower, sentiment has eroded, yet nothing truly catastrophic has taken place. And during all of this, something unexpected happened: The fundamentals got stronger. - Institutions just getting started - Pro-crypto administration - ETFs going mainstream - DATs rolling out - Corporate treasuries warming up - Wall Street infrastructure finally being built - Tokenization + prediction markets gaining real traction - Early Strategic Bitcoin Reserve conversations If you told me we’d get all of this during a “bear market,” I’d have laughed. And here’s my favorite part: If this dislocation widens - prices drifting lower while the fundamentals get stronger - I’ll only be happier. Watching the portfolio bleed never feels great, but when the underlying foundation is improving, cheaper prices become opportunities, not warnings. The real story is this: This cycle created things that can’t be undone. - BlackRock is here to stay. - Fidelity isn’t getting undone. - ETFs aren’t going back in the bottle. - The SBR conversation isn’t disappearing. - And the institutional/regulatory foundation built this cycle doesn’t unwind because prices dipped. If gold can go on a generational run, there’s no reason Bitcoin and this entire industry can’t pick itself back up and turn itself around. This isn’t 2022. Not even close.