China bans Bitcoin. The expected impact

of this was that since China had a huge Bitcoin mining

industry, the ban was expected to cripple Bitcoin's network.

But guess what? Bitcoin loves chaos. Businesses

were getting shut down, people were getting locked in their homes. I remember the

markets crashing at the time and everyone was basically thinking that

the world was going to come to a complete halt. And it basically did. They

thought that these capital controls would force people away

from what they thought was risky assets like Bitcoin. My

lesson to you is stand back. I'm Matthew Fraser and

this is Crypto Collective. After making millions with Amazon

and e-commerce, I realized that if I was starting again

today, crypto would be my first choice. I'm here

to help you take your first steps and build real wealth. Ready

to set yourself up for life? Let's go! And in

this episode, we're going to be breaking down the nine major

events in Bitcoin history where the world thought it was going

to collapse and it didn't. So the first major

event happened in 2013. This was the Cyprus banking crisis.

Now what happened was Cyprus announced a bail-in policy and

it started freezing and seizing customer bank deposits to bail

out Could you guess? The banks, of course. They

started bailing out the banks. Now, what happened was

capital controls would force people away from what was

considered at the time risky assets like Bitcoin. Now,

can you guess what the expected impact was? They thought that these

capital controls would force people away from

what they thought was risky assets like Bitcoin. But

what actually happened? Well, Bitcoin became a safe

haven as people from Cypress and others rushed

into Bitcoin to protect their wealth. Now, Bitcoin price

soared from just $45 to over $200. Michael

Saylor famously says that Bitcoin loves chaos.

And in this particular situation, it was very chaotic. And

so people put their money into Bitcoin to protect their wealth.

So the next major event happened in 2017 and

this was China bans Bitcoin and

I must just say for the first time now China banned

initial coin offerings which are commonly called ICOs and

ordered which I would say with their iron fist local

exchanges to shut down Now, the

expected impact of this was that since

China had a huge Bitcoin mining industry, the ban was

expected to cripple Bitcoin's network. But

guess what? Bitcoin's network is global, right?

So not one country controls Bitcoin. Not America, not

China, although a lot of transactions happen in the US, but

Asia has a lot of transactions too, right? And so not

one nation state, not one, entity, not one,

company, right, can control the Bitcoin network. And

that's why people love it because it is decentralized. So what ultimately happened

in China? Well, the price dropped from $4,000 to $3,000. But

within three months, Bitcoin then went on to

hit an all-time high of $20,000. Could

you imagine? Imagine those days when Bitcoin was at $20,000. What a dream. So

this just goes to show, even the communist government

of China thought that they could control with

their iron fist and cripple the Bitcoin industry.

And guess what? It didn't work. It just sent the price up. Now

let's get to the event that no one, unfortunately, can ever forget.

and that is the COVID Scandemic and

this Scandemic initially caused a sharp market

downturn and this is around early 2020 now I

remember this specifically because as you can remember businesses

were getting shut down people were getting locked in their homes I remember the

markets crashing at the time and everyone was basically

thinking that the world was gonna come to a complete halt, and it basically did.

What happened was this led to one of the fastest recoveries, though,

in the stock market in history. So the Dow Jones gained

6.6%, the S&P 500 gained 15.6%, and the NASDAQ was up 43.7% by the end of 2020. Incredible.

So despite the initial shock, the cryptocurrency market

demonstrated remarkable resistance and growth. Now

with Bitcoin's price rising by, wait for

it, 700%. Now this was from March 2020 to March 2021. and

the overall crypto market capitalization surging

from 191 billion to January 2020 to

769 billion. So despite the initial shock of COVID

on the entire globe, the cryptocurrency market demonstrated remarkable

resilience and growth with Bitcoin's price rising

by 700% from March 2020 to March 2021. and

the overall crypto market capitalization surging from

$191 billion in January 2020 to $769 billion

by December 2020. Now this indicates an increased

investor interest in cryptocurrencies and potential safe havens

during the pandemic uncertainty. I

lived through this now what's interesting though is

I was not in the market during this period in fact I

was in an online business and what happened during that time is

online business I was in Amazon and Shopify went through

the freaking roof and my sales This

went crazy, right? I made millions and

millions and millions of dollars. So although that period was

really, really bad for some, and I do feel for all those small businesses

that got shut down, on the flip side, I had an online business where

I made millions and millions of dollars. And I'm now using those

millions of dollars, rotated the profits, and now I've

rotated them into Bitcoin. So guys, this is just another

reminder that Bitcoin loves chaos.

When the markets do crash, ultimately, because of things

like the scamdemic or other things, that

is actually the time if you've got money sitting on the sidelines, that's when

you want to put money in, right? When everyone is

bleeding and people are thinking the world is going to end, That's

when you want to start buying. And that's how you will ultimately create

generational wealth. Very, very fast. Okay, guys,

let's roll into 2021 now. What happens then? China

bans Bitcoin again, right? China loves banning

Bitcoin multiple times. So what happened was China banned Bitcoin

mining, forcing miners to shut down and

relocate. But of course, Bitcoin mining makes

up part of the Bitcoin mining network. And

as I mentioned before, not one country, not one nation state, not

one government or company controls not

just Bitcoin network, but also Bitcoin mining. The expected impact

that China thought was going to happen was that Bitcoin's hash rate, which was

how much computing power they have to help mine Bitcoin, they

thought it would plummet. and they thought it was going to destroy the

network security and confidence and ultimately kill Bitcoin

altogether. But what happened? Well, China

didn't realize that there's other people that also mine and help secure

the network around the globe. So Bitcoin initially dropped, but

miners moved to new locations like the US and Kazakhstan, and

the network recovered within months, which then saw

the price go up even further. All right, let's talk about Terraluna. Terra

Luna was all the rage at the time and it was a blockchain protocol that

used algorithmic stablecoins with Luna as

its native token and UST as its stablecoin pegged

to the dollar. Basically, it was a big mess. And

in May of 2022, Terra's ecosystem collapsed when

UST lost its dollar peg, right? So UST

was a stablecoin which is pegged to the US dollar one

for one. Now it detached from that. It was no longer one

for one. Now this caused Luna to hyper inflate

and lose 99.98% of its value within days, wiping out nearly $45 billion of

market capitalization. Now,

despite the massive losses, this didn't crash

the broader market because, one, it was largely contained within

the Terra ecosystem. Two, swift action

by other platforms to distance themselves from Terra limited

contagion. And three, the crypto market had already

been experiencing a downturn, reducing the shock's impact

on the overall sentiment. Now, I remember this time. because

Terra was all the rage and it was around the time that I just

got into the crypto market I started buying Bitcoin and

some other cryptocurrencies but for some reason I

never bought Terra there was just something about Terra that just didn't

sound right to me and so I didn't invest my money and

it was during a period where the market was as I mentioned before was

on a downward trend right so it was after the 2021 high

I remember though the day of the crash it

just all of a sudden there was a red candle and I thought geez what's

going on here and but then I didn't

know the market so well I was a bit new and I

thought Is this a buying opportunity? Is

this crash a buying opportunity? Because of course what you're thinking is you

can now get Terra Luna at a bargain basement price. So

when it rebounds you can make a lot of money. Now I admit I didn't

put all my money in but I did put, I remember the

number, $1,500. It wasn't enough to break me and it was a

big time gamble and I watched that $1,500 Go

in at $1,500 and within a matter of seconds $1,400, $1,300 and then within

about a day it was all the way down to about $3 or something, right?

And so that was a big lesson for me. And my lesson to

you is stand back, right? Understand what

else is happening in the marketplace. Do some research. Don't just

watch your exchange, right? Watching the prices. Actually

do some research outside the exchange to understand why

that particular crypto is on a downward trajectory because

then you'll find out that it's actually more to it than just how you're gonna get

it at a bargain basement price. In fact, you'd find out that that

thing was never ever going to recover and you

couldn't get your money out quick enough. Hey, just quickly, if you're ready to dive

deeper into crypto and Bitcoin and build real wealth, join

my free crypto collective community. It's where I share

exclusive insights and strategies and live discussions to

help you succeed, whether you're a beginner or scaling your

portfolio. Click on the link in the description and join us today. Now

back to the episode. All right, let's talk about FTX. For

most people who are in the crypto space, they will remember this

very well because it is so recent. Now,

FTX was a major cryptocurrency exchange founded by

Sam Bankman Freed. Isn't he famous now? SBF. Now,

he was offering advanced trading options like derivatives, Futures

and leverage tokens and once was once

valued at 32 billion dollars so in

November of 2022 FTX collapsed after

revelations of Mishandling of funds between

FTX and Alameda research, which was also basically owned by

them triggered mass withdrawals people couldn't get

their money out fast enough now this was exposing them and to

an $8 billion hole in FTX's accounts leading

to bankruptcy and ultimately what happened was

criminal charges were laid against Sam Bankman

Freed. So the FTX collapse did not crash the

broader financial market because its impact was largely contained within

the cryptocurrency sector. And this was due to the limited exposure

of systemic market participants and the relatively small

size of the crypto market compared to the traditional

finance market. Now, I was around when

this happened too. Now, funny enough, I also didn't

have any FTX, but I'd learnt my lesson

from Terra Luna. When the FTX price was

collapsing, because you could buy crypto share in FTX,

And when the crypto price was plummeting, I'd

learnt my lesson from Terra Luna. I didn't just start rushing

and thinking, oh, I can just get a bargain. No, I was very much

aware now of keeping abreast of all of the news that

was happening in the crypto space. So

I knew when this thing started to collapse, It wasn't collapsing because

now it was, oh, I thought I was going to get some sort of a bargain

price. It was collapsing because of fraud and deception

within that company. Now, you've got to remember what was happening at that stage. So

many people lost money, like a lot of people. to

billions of dollars okay and it was a

trick because on face value you could

see FTX it was plastered the FTX branding was plastered on

stadiums it was on even the Mercedes-Benz Formula

One car Now, if you're following Formula One like me, you would just think, hey,

it's on the Formula One car, it must be a credible company. And of course,

this was all just smoke and mirrors. They had done this deliberately to

carry favor with obviously the broader market to think

that they were a legitimate company. And they were also donating

millions and millions of dollars mainly to the Democratic Party

in the US to carry favor against regulations

that I guess prying eyes into their affairs, okay? So,

It's unfortunate that this happened. The takeaway for

this though is something that I always talk about, which is do

not hold your crypto on the exchange. So

FTX was an exchange where you could buy Bitcoin for example and hold

it with them. And that was a big mistake for so many people. And

this should be a lesson to you now. Even if you think that

a particular exchange looks good at face value because they've

got a great logo plastered all over a Formula 1 car,

that doesn't mean that it could go under. Let

that be a lesson to you. So guys, if you want to learn more about crypto exchanges, I've

got a specific episode about that which you can find the link to it in the

show notes. All right, and then we move on to another one which I lived through, which was in

2023, which was the Signature Bank Collapse. Now,

Signature Bank was one of the only banks in the US that

was crypto-friendly. And for many of us who are in Australia, crypto

banks is something that is key to getting our money from

our bank, into crypto exchanges so we can buy things like

Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. So Signature Bank was

the go-to of not just people who

wanted to transfer money to exchanges, but also for

people that owned cryptocurrency type businesses. So

what was happening in America, if you owned a cryptocurrency business, let's

say you were a consultant for cryptocurrency and the business name

that you had was cryptocurrency consulting 20 USA,

then you would want to go and set up a bank account right under that company

name. And so a lot of the banks were simply rejecting you

as an applicant. You couldn't open a bank account because you had the word

crypto in your business name. That's what was happening. So Signature

Bank was one of these very, very few banks that

would allow business people to set up bank accounts with them. So

the Signature Bank was one of these banks that served

crypto clients and they held $10 billion in

crypto deposits by January 2021 and

operating the Signet payment system for instant crypto

transfers which is exactly the type of things that we need right

here in Australia. I must say I use some Australian banks and my

transfers happen straight away. As we all know, living in Australia,

we need banks in Australia to help or

facilitate the transfers over to cryptocurrency exchanges. Now, if

you jump into my community, absolutely free. Find the link in

the description or the bio. You'll find I've got a list of

banks who you should use. And we talk about these things daily. in

my private community of which banks are working the best and who

to look out for. So back to Signature Bank. This bank was shut down by

New York state regulators on March the 12th, 2023, due

to a crisis of confidence in its leadership and

concerns about its financial stability, marking

the third largest commercial bank failure in US

history. Now, while the Signature Bank collapse caused

initial concern in the crypto industry, it did

not lead to a broader market crash. So while the

Signature Bank collapse caused initial concern in the crypto industry,

it did not lead to a broader market crash because, one,

the impact was largely contained within the crypto sector. Two,

other banks and financial institutions were hesitant to

take on crypto clients, so limiting the contagion. and

three the crypto market had already experienced significant

volatility reducing the shocks impact on

overall sentiment so this again it was the bear market so sentiment

was fairly low so there was a guess a floor price of

where the market was going to go to and i remember this period exactly

because the price from memory was it was in the $20,000 mark

and I remember a friend of mine said you know what I've heard the price

is gonna drop down to like $3,000 US dollars so

I'm not gonna buy and I remember I said my advice

to you would be just to buy like dollar cost average in

at these prices because these prices are so low Eventually,

the price came down to about $16,000. And my

friend said, no, no, no. I still think it's going to drop

to maybe $10,000. So I'm not going to buy. Now, meanwhile, I

was buying all the time, like every week, if

I could, at these prices. My friend kept waiting. And

what ended up happening was the $10,000 and the $3,000 price

that he thought was going to come never came. And

then, of course, what happened is the market then reversed and it went back

up again. But as it kept climbing up, he kept thinking,

I'm going to wait because it's still going to drop. I'm going to wait. It's still going to drop. And it just kept

going up and up and up. So he missed the price at $16,000 USD.

He missed it at $20,000. He missed it at $25,000 and $30,000. And ultimately,

he had to suck it in and open

up his wallet. and buy it at about a

$40,000 or $50,000 price point. Because by then it was just

going up and it was not going to be returning back to $18,000 price

ever again. So my lesson there is you must buy

through the bear period. Don't think you're ever going to time

the exact bottom because you'll never get the bottom. So in 2023, we then

saw the US banking crisis. Now, this involved the bank I just mentioned

before, Signature Bank, but also involved Silvergate and

SVB collapse. Now

in this particular event, crypto friendly banks like Silvergate,

like Signature Bank and Silicon Valley Bank all

collapsed causing an absolute market panic. Now

the expected impact on Bitcoin was that it would crash

as banking access for crypto firms was completely cut off.

But what happened? Well, Bitcoin then soared from $19,000 to

over $28,000 within weeks as

investors fled to Bitcoin as a safe haven

asset. As I mentioned before, Bitcoin loves

chaos. So let's bring it to more recent times, 2024. Now the

US Bitcoin ETF approval and regulatory battles

was on. And the SEC, which is the Securities

and Exchange Commission of USA, finally approved the

spot Bitcoin ETF in early 2024. But

lawsuits and government pressure was on crypto companies. So

during this period, the Securities and Exchange Commission of USA finally

approved the spot Bitcoin ETF. And I remember at

the time, it was like a big moment. We all

thought that Bitcoin was going to go absolutely parabolic at that time. And

it kind of didn't. there was a little bit of a build-up to that price

point when the ETF was then approved but then it kind of dropped off

a bit so it was kind of a little bit flat you would say but

what was happening behind the scenes though despite this Bitcoin ETF

was that lawsuits and government pressure on crypto companies were

still impacting the market so there was still some uncertainty

about what was going to happen there so on the flip side though True

OG Bitcoiners thought that because of this Bitcoin

ETF, it was now going to ruin the Bitcoin marketplace.

Now, why do they think that? Well, they thought it was going to create more centralization within

some of these big money makers such as BlackRock, for example,

one of the biggest money makers in the world. and

they thought it was going to completely kill the Bitcoin independence which ultimately was

why Bitcoin was established It was established in the first place against

big business It was established against deflation of

currency against fiat currency It was established to protect

people and ultimately be a freedom money So what ultimately

happened though after this ETF was approved was that Bitcoin

rallied to over $45,000 So

I remember what happened at the time Was thinking that this Bitcoin ETF

was going to make Bitcoin go to the moon and

so did everybody else so as the news came out more

and more people started buying Bitcoin thinking that we're gonna make bazillions of

dollars and Ultimately it landed flat once

the Bitcoin ETF came to fruition now ultimately,

how do I see the Bitcoin ETF? I think ultimately It's

a good thing in the sense that it's freedom. I'm letting the

market decide what they want to do. If people want to

use a Bitcoin ETF, then so be it. But if people also want to use

or hold Bitcoin themselves, that's also a good thing. Ultimately,

it allowed people who couldn't necessarily invest in

Bitcoin traditionally by buying Bitcoin the ETF

allowed an on-ramp for pension funds and other

government institutions to have what they call a proxy exposure

to Bitcoin so let's move to now more recent times and

I say recent times as in the past couple of weeks what

we've seen is now Trump is now the president of

the United States now he's come in saying that he's going to be the best

president for crypto that ever existed of course now crypto

hasn't been around for that long it's only been around for basically 16 years

but he is true to his word everything that he has said he is going

to do But there's some other things that he is talking about

which are causing some shocks within the marketplace. One of the things specifically, which

only happened in recent days, was the announcement of proposed tariffs

on Canada and Mexico. And once those proposed

tariffs were announced, the market then

went down. Now, I must admit, It was a bit of a shock to

me even though the crypto space knew that these

tariffs were being proposed because all through Trump's campaign, we

knew this was coming if he was going to be elected. So he did get

elected and so the tariffs are now, you know, being proposed. So

what ended up happening though the other day was I saw some of my altcoins

drop 30%. Now, I've

got to admit, I'm in the red on a lot of my

altcoins anyway. My second biggest holding after Bitcoin is Solana. That's

the only basically altcoin that is in the green because I've held it

for so long. But so many of my other portfolio of altcoins

are in the red. And then we saw this other 30% drop after this

tariff talk, which ultimately didn't even come to fruition anyway because it was using

that as a leverage tool. But the market got super scared. They

panicked and they pulled out of it. What's the good news out of

this though is that Bitcoin held firm. We

didn't see a big, big drop in the Bitcoin price. And I

think ultimately, as I keep saying, Bitcoin loves

chaos. So when you're thinking about what is the safe haven of

cryptos as a whole, let's say people are going to put their money

into Bitcoin. All right, so guys, that wraps up this episode. I

hope you enjoyed going through all the different things that try to tank the

Bitcoin market, but ultimately didn't. So

let this be a lesson into the future. When you see things that

are either tanking the market and the price does significantly drop,

that is your time not to run away. That is not the time to sell. That

is the time to buy and stack more Bitcoin. Alright

guys, thanks so much and take care. Thanks for tuning in to Crypto Collective.

If you've enjoyed this episode, the best way to show your support is to leave

a five star review on Apple Podcast or Spotify and

make sure to subscribe to the YouTube channel so you don't miss an episode. You

can also find more of me at I'm Matthew