2026-02-18
7 分钟The Economist Hello, Alice Fullwood here.
Co-host of Money Talks, our weekly podcast on markets, the economy and business.
Welcome to Editors Picks.
You're about to hear an article from the latest edition of The Economist.
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Chill winds have been battering America's eastern seaboard for weeks,
driving temperatures in places to their lowest in decades.
But that has nothing on the deep freeze into which investors have shoved crypto assets.
The value of a Bitcoin has dropped from $124,000 in early October to around $70,000 today.
and the market value of all cryptocurrencies has fallen by more than $2 trillion.
Though the asset class has slumped before, its boosters now seem more despondent than ever.
In some ways the extent of their misery is puzzling.
Bitcoin's 45% plunge is by no means the deepest on record.
From a peak in late 2021, its price fell by a whopping 77%.
It took around three years for the crypto industry's market value to reach a new high.
Today's bear market is barely four months old.
But look at how much better other asset classes are doing.
In 2022,
crypto investors could take comfort from the fact that plenty of others were nursing their own losses.
From peak to trough, the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 index fell by over a third that year.