Lessons from the crypto winter

This paper analyses the mechanisms involved in the recent failings in crypto-asset markets, focusing on events in 2022 through September. The paper assesses the role of centralised finance (CeFi) and decentralised finance (DeFi), and the disproportionate impact the crypto market turmoil has had on retail market participants. It examines learnings of the recent crypto-asset market downturn, also know as the “crypto winter”, including high interconnectedness within the crypto-asset ecosystem; elaborate mechanisms of financial engineering that heavily use leverage and are built on the composability offered by DeFi (i.e., components of DeFi are pieced together to create new products); and increased market concentration. The paper also highlights the urgency for policy action and provides policy recommendations.