The Crypto Crash: all Ponzi schemes topple eventually

theguardian.com:

One week ago, as cryptocurrency prices plummeted, Celsius Network – an experimental cryptocurrency bank with more than one million customers that has emerged as a leader in the murky world of decentralized finance, or DeFi – announced it was freezing withdrawals “due to extreme market conditions.”

Earlier this past week, Bitcoin dropped 15 percent over 24 hours to its lowest value since December 2020. Last month, TerraUSD, a stablecoin – a system that was supposed to perform a lot like a conventional bank account but was backed only by a cryptocurrency called Luna – collapsed, losing 97 percent of its value in just 24 hours, apparently destroying some investors’ life savings.

Eighty-nine years ago, Franklin D Roosevelt signed into lawthe Banking Act of 1933 – also known as the Glass-Steagall Act. It separated commercial banking from investment banking – Main Street from Wall Street – to protect people who entrusted their savings to commercial banks from having their money gambled away.

Glass-Steagall’s larger purpose was to put an end to the giant Ponzi scheme that had overtaken the American economy in the 1920s and led to the Great Crash of 1929.

Americans had been getting rich by speculating on shares of stock and various sorts of exotica (roughly analogous to crypto). These risky assets’ values rose solely because a growing number of investors put money into them.

But at some point, Ponzi schemes topple of their own weight. When the toppling occurred in 1929, it plunged the nation and the world into a Great Depression. The Glass-Steagall Act was a means of restoring stability.

But by the 1980s, America forgot the financial trauma of 1929. As the stock market soared, speculators noticed they could make lots more money if