Interest in digital assets such as cryptocurrency and NFTs has boomed in the last five years, and with it has come fascinating, innovative approaches to creating a new decentralized financial system. But the stunning growth of the industry is not without its setbacks. The recent volatility in the market, spurred by crashes in the Luna/UST stablecoin, has eliminated trillions of dollars in value in a matter of weeks.

Luna purported to be a safe digital asset not prone to market volatility, but when major investors pulled their funds from the asset, it created the cryptocurrency equivalent of a bank run. In a matter of days, this digital asset that used algorithms to maintain its “peg” to the value of the U.S. dollar entered a death spiral and became almost worthless. This sudden collapse of one of the largest cryptocurrencies, along with various global macroeconomic headwinds, kicked off a bear market, also known as a “crypto winter.” The market pullback has caused layoffs and a slowdown in hiring across the sector.