Cryptocurrency’s most compelling, profitable use case has been the enablement of financial fraud at scale.

From the downfall of Three Arrows Capital, the implosion of defi protocols like Celsius, the staggering fraud of FTC—not to mention the countless rugpulls of small projects and the inevitable hype of worthless assets like NFTs, crypto’s most compelling and profitable use case seems to be separating the poorly informed from their savings.

This is why cryptocurrency is no longer in a winter. It’s in a decline. Corporate interest and investment in crypto projects are declining, private and venture investment in crypto companies is drying up, and the average consumer now sees crypto for what it always was—a scam.