As much as any other industry, crypto hasn’t grown in a smooth line upwards. Bitcoin was born, barely learned to walk, and then stumbled into several precipices. Community and regulators drew several lessons from those experiences, moved forward, and some shiny things appeared along the way, too. Over the years, we’ve lived through some very important events that have changed crypto forever.
We’ve already talked about
The DAO Hack
Not every project is destined for success. The DAO by Slock.it, launched in April 2016, seemed to have everything to be a star. It was a star for a while, indeed. They raised around $150 million in ether (ETH), making them one of the largest crowdfunding campaigns in history. The promise was a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) built on Ethereum that would work as an investment fund.
In other words, people would pool crypto and use voting tokens to decide which projects received financing, without a traditional company or managers. It seemed like a great idea until the code didn’t work as expected.
It may not seem like a lot, considering more recent hacks on crypto platforms, but, at the time, it was a huge scandal for Ethereum. The DAO was one of their first “successful” projects, so confidence in the network dwindled. That’s why the core team made a very controversial decision: they applied a “fork” (update) on the network to “erase” the hack.
ETC & Howey
Since blockchains are supposed to be immutable and decentralized (not controlled by a single party), there was a lot of community backlash after the fork. Enough for the attacked network to survive, with hack and all, as Ethereum Classic (ETC), while the modified one continued as the Ethereum (ETH) we know today. Besides, this wasn't the only consequence. The DAO attracted considerable attention to crypto, including from regulators.
In 2017, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) referenced this event when
DeFi Investments: One Event After Another
Smart contracts are automated agreements built in code, designed to offer immutable results once pre-set conditions are met. After the launch of crypto networks that offered this feature, like Ethereum (in 2015) or Obyte (in 2016), developers soon discovered they could be used for investments, too. They started to create a whole range of financial products that worked with smart contracts, 24/7, without access requirements or managers behind them. Decentralized Finance (DeFi) was born around 2017, bringing several neat events or milestones for crypto.
Early stablecoins appeared around 2014, using external reserves or algorithms to track a fiat price (often the USD). They'd move into smart contract platforms over the years. Lending platforms appeared in 2017, locking collateral in smart contracts to mint loans. Early Decentralized Exchanges (
By 2020, about $9 billion
Terra Collapse
Launched in 2020, Terra was a popular blockchain ecosystem with its own stablecoin, Terra USD (UST). Unlike other stablecoins, backed by traditional money, UST kept its 1 USD price by minting and burning LUNA coins, the native asset of Terra. It was an algorithmic stablecoin, likely the most popular of its type. It worked for a while… until it didn’t.
By early 2022, Terra and UST had attracted billions in institutional and retail investment, with the broader ecosystem
The fallout spread far beyond Terra. Major hedge funds like
Legal Tender and Reserve Asset
In 2021, El Salvador, a small Central American nation, made global headlines when it recognized Bitcoin as a legal form of money alongside the U.S. dollar, changing decades of monetary policy. At the same time, the government began buying Bitcoin for national reserves, funding purchases directly through the treasury.
The event brought government-backed wallets, nationwide infrastructure, and worldwide attention. Adoption among citizens moved unevenly, but the signal was loud and clear: a sovereign state was willing to build policy around an open, borderless network. International institutions
By 2025, after revisions tied to an IMF agreement, Bitcoin
No other country maintains Bitcoin as legal tender today, but the consequences endure. Governments now discuss crypto for policy and reserves. That shift began here, and it changed the conversation for good.
Crypto ETFs
Exchange-traded funds (ETFs) are investment products that trade on stock exchanges like shares while holding a basket of underlying assets. Those underlying assets could be cryptocurrencies, yes, but the details remained with regulators, constantly denying this possibility. For years, crypto ETFs felt like a door that almost opened, then shut again.
The first
A turning point arrived in 2024. The US SEC finally __approved __the launch of 11 Bitcoin spot ETFs, which hold this asset directly on behalf of investors. BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust and Fidelity’s Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund led the wave, drawing billions within weeks. Crypto moved from niche access to mainstream finance infrastructure, changing how institutions, advisors, and long-term investors engage with digital assets.
Decentralization for the Future
An important point to consider is that most of these events have pushed crypto into mainstream finance, for better or for worse. Some of them have created new rules, some others have filled the vaults of centralized parties (like big companies and governments) with a lot of cryptocurrencies. This is good for liquidity, but not that good for the decentralization crypto was created for. The best alternative for individual users is likely to take advantage of those new products and accessibility, while keeping their main
DeFi is also booming, with no serious limitations in sight, so users can also trade and invest through these protocols. In
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