Recapping the Biggest Winners and Losers in Crypto for 2023
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Recapping the Biggest Winners and Losers in Crypto for 2023
Year's biggest losers: SBF, SEC Chair Gary Gensler, etc.; year's biggest winners: Justin Sun, Tether CTO.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsAuthor: Francesco
Translation: Sharon, BlockBeats
Editor's Note:
As the year draws to a close, crypto researcher Francesco reflects on major events in the cryptocurrency space in 2023 and identifies what he considers the biggest winners and losers. He argues that SBF, SEC Chair Gary Gensler, U.S. Senator Elisabeth Warren, former Binance CEO CZ, and maximalists were the biggest losers of the year, while Coinbase, Tron founder Justin Sun, Tether CTO Paolo Ardoino, Layer-2 platforms, Solana, and friend.tech emerged as top winners. He also predicts that friend.tech will likely make a comeback in 2024. Below is the translated version of the original article:
In this article, I decided to try something different—looking back at the past year and compiling two lists: the winners and losers of 2023.
Let’s start with those who might have hoped for a better year.
The Losers of 2023
SBF
Mentioning SBF here may represent a broader category—the smart individuals who believed they could deceive others and cover up their crimes through bribery and vast sums of money. Yet, SBF now stands as a first-hand example proving this isn’t always possible.
Previous bear market cycles have already revealed who was swimming naked, with the classic revolving door becoming one between crypto firms and prison cells. The U.S. is trying to demonstrate that anyone who climbs the ladder through deception will ultimately face legal consequences.
However, SBF also exposed flaws in our system—namely, that media and government protection can be bought. As long as you pay enough, everyone can look the other way.
As mentioned above, SBF represents a whole group of fraudsters who acted cool and arrogant (I’m looking at you, Do Kwon), only to end up completely imprisoned due to their crimes.
Gary Gensler
I feel sorry for this man—I can think of very few political figures as embarrassingly pathetic as him. His malicious intent has been clearly demonstrated by his past statements. His persecution of cryptocurrency appears to be a blood sacrifice offered to secure promotion, showing his ruthless masters that he’s a good boy who will do whatever it takes to maintain the status quo.
I truly sympathize with him; I’m quite certain he goes home and bursts into tears. To me, this man is the biggest loser.
Elisabeth Warren
Imagine someone who opposes both banks and cryptocurrency. Now imagine building your entire career as an anti-bank Democrat while opposing the greatest tool for decentralizing banking—and potentially the only real competition banks have ever faced.
Yet, by selling your soul, you can become exactly that.
What else needs to be said? If possible, please explain to her how cryptocurrency actually works. She doesn’t know—but she spent years advocating for crypto-like solutions until they were built, only to now turn against them and defend the status quo.
What a loser…...
CZ
Placing CZ fourth on this list makes sense.
Long considered the public face of the crypto industry, CZ has pleaded guilty and reached a multi-billion-dollar settlement with Binance. And it’s not over yet—CZ faces trial in Q1 2024 and is currently banned from leaving the United States.
Looking back, this outcome may seem inevitable—or unimaginable—depending on where you stand regarding sympathy for Binance. For the broader crypto industry, this means eliminating a systemic risk: removing an exchange perceived as “too big to fail.”
Still, I can’t help but feel some sympathy for CZ. Running an exchange like Binance across multiple jurisdictions is extremely difficult. The message is clear: you might resist temporarily, but if U.S. authorities want you, they will get you—even if you’re an offshore entity operating outside the U.S.
Maximalism
Perhaps the biggest loser of 2023 was maximalism.
The continuation of Ethereum’s scaling roadmap—with the development and deployment of L2s, Optimistic and ZK Rollups, new data availability solutions, Retaking, and new L1s focused on gaming and parallelization (Monad, Blast, Neon)—has laid out a clear path forward for blockchain evolution.
This path is built on modularity and interoperability, not isolated ecosystems. Those who bet on closed systems and failed to harness cross-protocol and cross-network network effects are now struggling. Those who lived off claims of their own network’s technological superiority now worry about justifying their existence within a broader, interconnected ecosystem.
On the other hand, those who bet on cooperation and coordination benefited most, adopting a win-win approach that wasn’t always self-centered. In 2024, being a maximalist will be awkward.
Now, let’s turn to the biggest winners of 2023.
The Winners of 2023
Coinbase
Brian is by far our favorite tech bald guy.
We don’t have enough space here to highlight every positive move Coinbase made this year. Still, in my view, Coinbase is the largest company that still embodies the spirit of crypto, and we’ve seen multiple times how they’ve challenged SEC rulings in court.
Beyond being a CEX focused on its business, Coinbase has also been a force for good in the industry—earning its place among 2023’s winners. Although stock performance alone isn’t everything, Coinbase shares have performed exceptionally well since the beginning of the year.
During a challenging trading year, Coinbase successfully shifted much of its revenue toward non-trading income. Notably, given that most proposed ETFs name Coinbase as custodian, their custody business is positioned for particularly strong performance in 2024.
Justin Sun
Justin Sun is one of the god-tier OGs in the crypto world. The line between him and Tron has never been blurrier. Yet, we cannot overlook Justin Sun’s position among the winners of 2023.
Tron’s USDT has become the most traded stablecoin and is widely used in inflation-stricken developing countries.
Arguably, this is the best use case in today’s crypto world—delivering tangible benefits to countless people around the globe.
Paolo Ardoino
Alongside pizza and pasta, Paolo is another great Italian tradition.
Since taking over as CEO, the king of Tether has continued to pioneer in the industry. In 2023, Tether reported over $32 billion in excess reserves and became one of the largest holders of U.S. Treasuries, with over $70 billion in holdings.
Tether’s dominance found an unexpected ally: the collapse of U.S. banks (such as Silicon Valley Bank) that held USDC (Tether’s main competitor) in custody.
Tether’s hybrid structure—combining offshore compliance with billions in U.S. Treasury holdings and close ties with regulators (even intelligence agencies)—makes it a fascinating case. Paolo enjoys a golden halo in the industry: a staunch libertarian Bitcoin supporter whose company dominates the altcoin market and maintains tight relationships with U.S. regulators, frequently seizing and freezing funds.
We’ve seen other Bitcoin supporters fall from grace over minor issues—why does the community always turn a blind eye to Paolo?
L2
You probably spent most of 2023 trading on L2s—first on Optimism and Arbitrum, then on ZkSync or others like Scroll, Linea, or LayerZero.
Ethereum’s scaling roadmap is moving forward, and many new players are joining!
While many believe this helps draw transaction volume and attention away from Ethereum, that’s precisely the point of scaling. In fact, the success of L2s is strong evidence of Ethereum’s overall success.
There’s little left to say: this is one of the most active sectors in the entire industry, recently launching some captivating innovative applications. Stay tuned for 2024, when many of these networks will launch their mainnets.
Solana
We couldn’t avoid crowning Solana. What goes down must come up—and this holds especially true for Solana’s explosive price surge and ecosystem revival this year.
A network once dismissed as a "ghost town" at the start of the year successfully reinvented itself—cutting ties with bad actors, reorganizing along community lines, creating new tools and infrastructure, and delivering value to users. It launched a suite of DeFi products, added new use cases, and expanded pathways for staking and using SOL in DeFi.
This combination led to renewed on-chain activity and transaction volume.
Solana is back.
friend.tech
The dApp of the year! When friend.tech first launched, I wrote an article saying I thought it had no future—now I’d like to say RIP to that post.
During a period of dull narratives, friend.tech captured most of the attention. Activity eventually slowed, sparking concerns about the future of "Web3 social media."
However, I’m highly confident that as we approach the airdrop, the hype around friend.tech will return with full force in 2024.
Above are the eleven winners and losers I believe defined 2023.
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