The Great Cryptocurrency Scam

> Whatever else one can say that cryptocurrency has accomplished, it has been one of the greatest destroyers of wealth in the financial history of mankind.

I'm not going to argue that cryptocurrency prices are in a great place, they aren't.

In early January 2018 the combined market capitalization of the measurable cryptocurrency tokens was ~$825B. Today's market capitalization is ~$146B, or about $679B in "destroyed" wealth. If you take Bitcoin's price movement from $19783 to $4508 from the start of 2018 until today, in isolation, investors have seen losses of $266B.

This is a lot of money, no doubt, but you don't need to go too far for examples using commonly described "good" assets with similar losses individually (a la BTC) or in aggregate (all cryptotokens) on a far shorter time horizon:

- Between October 3, 2018 and today, AAPL's stock losses have "destroyed" ~$262B in wealth.

- FAANG stocks (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google) have seen ~$822B in wealth destroyed as their stocks have fallen significantly from their high-water marks since the end of August 2018.

The ardent drum-beaters may say this is "good for Bitcoin" in some warped way (I don't agree) and I certainly can't argue that the current market outlook has many upsides, but hyperbolic criticisms aren't helpful.