The Wolf Of All Streets@scottmelker
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.
