Crypto collapses: the exchanges and lenders that failed

What counts as a crypto collapse in the crypto crash story?

A crypto collapse differs from a price crash. In a price crash, every asset falls together and holders keep their coins. In a collapse, one company stops paying: it freezes withdrawals, breaks a peg, or files for bankruptcy. Customers then wait in a legal queue while the market moves on without them.

The cases in this guide share that pattern. They span 4 types of company: exchanges, a stablecoin issuer, lenders and a fund, and banks. The table shows the order of events, and each row has its own guide with dates and the lesson that followed.

Which crypto exchange collapses shaped the market the most?

2 exchange failures stand apart. By April 2013, Mt. Gox handled over 70% of the world’s bitcoin trades, then halted all withdrawals on 7 February 2014 and filed for bankruptcy in Tokyo on 28 February 2014. The page on the Mt. Gox collapse follows that first large exchange failure and its long repayment process.

The second failure came in November 2022. FTX stopped processing withdrawals on 9 November and filed for bankruptcy in Delaware on 11 November 2022. The FTX collapse guide covers the 9 days between the first report and the filing, and it opens 5 further pages on dates, causes, people, customer funds and Alameda Research.

Why does the Terra Luna collapse belong in the crypto crash history?

Terra shows how a design can fail without a hack or a fraud charge in the first week. UST aimed to track the US dollar through a link to LUNA instead of dollar reserves. Starting 9 May 2022, UST lost its peg, and almost $45 billion of market value disappeared within one week.

The Terra Luna collapse guide explains the mint and burn mechanism and why a falling LUNA price fed the spiral. 2 shorter pages go deeper: one on the numbers of the May 2022 crash and one on the dollar peg itself. The case matters because other firms held Terra exposure.

How did crypto lenders and funds fail in 2022?

Celsius paused all withdrawals on 13 June 2022 and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on 13 July 2022. A British Virgin Islands court ordered Three Arrows Capital liquidated on 27 June 2022. The Celsius bankruptcy page and the Three Arrows Capital collapse page tell each story with its dates and its numbers.

Voyager suspended withdrawals on 1 July 2022 after reporting that Three Arrows Capital had not repaid loans totaling $666 million. BlockFi followed in November 2022. The page comparing crypto lender bankruptcies sets Celsius, BlockFi and Voyager side by side, so you can see which weaknesses repeated.

What happened to Silvergate and Signature Bank in the crypto market?

Crypto firms need banks to move dollars. Silvergate ran a real-time payments network for exchanges and reached about $12 billion in deposits in the third quarter of 2022. On 8 March 2023 it announced a wind down and liquidation, and New York officials closed Signature Bank on 12 March 2023.

These failures hit the market through plumbing, not through a coin price. The guide on Silvergate and Signature Bank explains how crypto deposits became a concentration risk for each bank and why traders felt the loss of payment rails.

What weak points do the crypto collapses share?

4 weak points recur across the cases. Customer assets sat with the company instead of in separate accounts. Firms lent to each other, so one default reached several balance sheets. Promised returns or pegs depended on rising prices. Disclosure came late, often after withdrawals had already stopped.

None of these weak points needs a price forecast to spot. They show in how a firm is built: where assets sit, who owes whom, and what a customer is told. Reading a firm this way gives you evidence that holds in any market phase, calm or stressed, and it works for exchanges, lenders and banks alike.

What did the crypto collapses teach regulators?

Regulators drew common lessons. The Financial Stability Board published its global framework for crypto-asset activities on 17 July 2023, built on the principle of same activity, same risk, same regulation, and it draws on lessons from events of the past year. The MiCA regulation entered into force in the European Union in June 2023.

The page on what the FTX collapse taught crypto regulators sets out those lessons in order. Reading it after the case pages shows how each failure maps to a rule on custody, disclosure or authorisation.

What can a reader check before trusting a crypto firm?

The cases suggest 4 checks. Ask where customer assets sit and who can move them. Ask for audited proof of reserves. Ask what the firm lends or invests with deposits. Ask which regulator authorises the activity. A firm that answers all 4 in writing gives you a concrete basis for a decision.

The EQOS Asia method page explains how a structured score turns such checks into one number, and the contact page lets you bring a specific decision. For the wider picture of causes and signals, return to the crypto crash hub, which links every branch of this series.

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About the author

Stéphane Jambu

President, EQOS Forecast Asia

Stéphane Jambu leads EQOS Forecast Asia and works as a consultant in e-commerce, search visibility, and AI. LinkedIn profile