But it's not collapsing at scale... not yet anyway. It's just one exchange, a big one but just one going under. It's scams and rug pulls predictably going under, same story as the last cycle. The only difference is that the news is covering it, it makes it seem like a bigger deal than it is.

And you want them to go under. When the scams stop going under is when you have a real problem, because that means the entire industry is in fact a scam.

The path toward Binance and Tether's ultimate collapse is not hard to see, which would almost guarantee the collapse of the whole system.

Why would it collapse the whole system? These blockchains run themselves, the ones worth a shit anyway. They were here before these companies, there's nothing fundamental that prevents them from being around after.

I am not really convinced of Tether having trouble anymore. I've been hearing it for years. They seem to have gotten lucky and cleaned up their act before collapsing, every time they do an audit or anything the last few years they show full collateral backing their assets in circulation. With regard to binance, I couldn't tell you one way or another, but they've survived more than one cycle so they probably know what they're doing.

I think you’re over thinking it. The .com crash didn’t affect the internet being around. But it decimated the eco-system of that era.

Did it? Or did the cruft just fall to the wayside where it belongs. From my recollection the panic lasted a year and within 5 years the companies that were part of it actually doing interesting things were valued much higher than at the peak of the bubble.

All it decimated were hype merchants and their lemmings. Hopefully the same is true here. I think it will be.