Forbes - Our Favorite Crypto Stories Of 2023

Washington’s crackdown on other leading digital-asset companies, including Coinbase, Kraken and Gemini, and dozens of cryptocurrencies sent chills across the market. 

The silver lining came later in the year, when bitcoin bounced above $43,300, leading the market to the pre-Terra collapse level on hopes that U.S. regulators will soon approve the first spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds, broadening access to crypto to investors who have so far been reluctant to engage with digital assets. 

Here are some of our favorite stories from 2023:

It may not matter if Craig Wright created bitcoin. The real question is whether the nearly 4,000 patents he controls or has pending will force computer programmers around the world to stop using open-source software as they now do—or pay up.

2. Sam Bankman-Fried Recalls His Hellish Week In A Caribbean Prison

In January, our director of research Steven Ehrlich spent a day with the convicted FTX founder at his parents’ home in California, where he had been put under house arrest. Tiny towels and stale Wonder Bread of the Bahamian prison were a bother, Bankman-Fried recounted, but for the former billionaire jail time was unbearable because he was offline. Having been found guilty on multiple counts of fraud and money laundering at the end of a month-long trial in November, Bankman-Fried now faces decades without the internet.

3. FTX Customers Should Recoup Most Of Their Losses, Unless IRS Bigfoots Them

There are many moving parts to the FTX bankruptcy, but exchange customers, especially small ones, stand to reclaim most of their lost assets if the U.S. government does not elbow them out of the way.

4. Forget Art, Let’s Trade: How A 10-Person Startup Came To Dominate NFT Markets

As the NFT buying frenzy has subsided, a new trader-focused NFT marketplace called Blur quietly dethroned OpenSea as the market leader.

5. How Binance Turned Its Failed Token ICO Into A Billion Dollar Windfall 

The mythology surrounding the rise of the world’s largest crypto exchange is impressive. However, a Forbes investigation reveals that Binance’s 2017 initial coin offering was a flop that the company quietly took advantage of to amass a lucrative digital-asset war chest.

Changpeng Zhao’s mysterious associate Guangying Chen emerged as a key player in Binance’s operations.

7. As Congress Dithers, Coinbase Turns To The Courts To Save Crypto 

Two cases pitting the Securities and Exchange Commission against the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the U.S. could clarify the legal status of digital assets—or finally force the politicians to do so.

8. How Time And Rising Crypto Markets Are Helping Barry Silbert’s Troubled Crypto Empire

Digital Currency Group, which owns the sponsor of the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust, is mired in lawsuits and faces a potential ban in New York State. Rising crypto markets could be its salvation.

9. Sam Altman’s Eyeball-Scanning Crypto Project Worldcoin Is Having An Identity Crisis

Is it a crypto company? A biometric authentication platform? A “human economic system?" Inside Worldcoin’s struggle to find itself.

10. A Thiel-Backed Startup Pitched A Futuristic City In Bhutan. Its Dragon King Is Building It Without Them

After a startup shared its idea for a tech Shangri-La with Bhutan’s royal government, the kingdom disavowed the project. Now, it’s preparing to announce its own mindfulness-focused “megacity.”