The year crypto didn't die

Greetings! It’s Hannah in San Francisco. Crypto faced a major reckoning in 2023. But first...Three things you need to know today:• Amazon wi [View in browser]( [Bloomberg]( [by Hannah Miller]( Greetings! It’s Hannah in San Francisco. Crypto faced a major reckoning in 2023. But first... Three things you need to know today: • Amazon will use [space lasers to transmit data]( • Elon Musk’s Grok is a [serious threat to ChatGPT]( • Startups are facing a [grim holiday season]( Not dead yet It’s been a dumpster fire of a year for crypto. There were [at least five arrests](, multiple bankruptcies and Sam Bankman-Fried went to jail. If any 12-month stretch should have killed the digital asset sector, surely, this was it. And yet, many in the industry insist it’s not as bad as it looked. First, a look back: After the collapses of 2022, the crypto carnage of 2023 started almost immediately. Startups shed more than 2,000 jobs during the first two months of the year, as companies like Crypto.com, Coinbase and Blockchain.com [laid off]( 20% or more of their employees. More cuts followed in the following months, as Ledger and Chainalysis slashed their headcounts. This fall, the industry offered the financial trial of the century: Bankman-Fried’s day in court showcased one of the biggest frauds in American history, exposing the entrepreneur’s luxe lifestyle, filled with [flights on private jets]( and celebrity hangouts, along with his disastrous mismanagement of customer funds. It wasn’t crypto’s only legal drama. Binance’s Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, the former leader of the world’s biggest crypto exchange, [pleaded guilty]( last month to anti-money laundering and US sanctions violations. (He’s expected to spend no more than 18 months in prison.) Meanwhile, Terraform Labs co-founder Do Kwon, ex-Celsius Network CEO Alex Mashinsky and Three Arrows Capital co-founder Su Zhu were all arrested in 2023 on various charges related to the collapse of their companies. The US Securities and Exchange Commission also [alleged]( that multiple companies were operating unregistered securities exchanges. And multimillion-dollar cartoon ape tokens saw their value plummet as NFT [trading volume sank](. At the same time, crypto venture funding has hit its [lowest level]( since 2020, [tumbling 63%]( during the third quarter from the same period last year, according to data from PitchBook. But all of this chaos hasn’t deterred crypto’s true believers. Industry boosters have pointed to several bright spots in 2023. For example, a July ruling in the SEC lawsuit against Ripple Labs found that the company’s crypto tokens [were only securities]( when sold directly to institutional investors, rather than retail ones. And some have cheered the legal action taken against Bankman-Fried and Zhao, spinning the convictions as a clean-out of bad actors that paves the way for a fresh chapter for crypto. There’s even optimism that FTX can be [successfully rebooted](. Perhaps the most significant sign of a potential crypto comeback is the rising price of Bitcoin, the OG cryptocurrency. Instead of going to zero, a Bitcoin’s value surpassed $44,700 earlier this month, reaching its highest point in more than a year. The rally was fueled by anticipation over the possible SEC approval of a Bitcoin exchange-traded fund. But Bitcoin is still far below its all-time high of roughly $69,000 in 2021, indicating that the volatile digital asset industry still has a long road to recovery. Crypto fans may not want to plan a trip to the moon just yet. —[Hannah Miller](mailto:hmiller129@bloomberg.net) The big story The biggest problem with lab-grown chicken is growing the chicken. Venture-backed startups such as Upside Foods have [run into numerous challenges](. One to watch [Watch the Bloomberg Technology TV analysis]( of 2023’s tech layoffs. Get fully charged Elon Musk will likely be forced to testify in an investigation by US regulators into his [purchases of Twitter stock]( before he acquired the company and changed its name to X. Apple’s market value is almost as big as the [entire French stock market](. A hacker hit one of the crypto industry’s [biggest names in security](. The UK is considering a crackdown on social media access for [children under the age of 16](. SpaceX got approval for [satellite calling](. More from Bloomberg Bloomberg House at Davos: Make us your home base at the World Economic Forum, Jan. 15 to 18. Find us at Promenade 115, a five-minute walk from the Congress Centre. [Register to join](. 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