What a difference a year makes. This time last year, cryptocurrencies were all the rage. Everywhere you turned, celebrities were hawking them — from Kim Kardashian to Spike Lee to Matt Damon. NFTs, a crypto offshoot that assigns blockchain ownership certificates to digital assets, boomed to bizarre heights when cartoon apes sold for millions. And being a real estate agent for virtual land became an actual career. Meanwhile the oldest and most popular cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, crested on its ever-wild ride of price valuation, peaking at $64,000 last November.

Today, Bitcoin’s value is plummeting back to earth, currently at about $16,000, depending on the day (or hour). NFT trading has all but collapsed. And various celebrities are under investigation for promoting the now bankrupt FTX crypto exchange in a class action lawsuit. The last few months have witnessed a series of dramas in the crypto universe, bringing down major players — including Terra, a “stable coin”; Celsius, a crypto-lending firm; and Three Arrows Capital, a crypto hedge fund. Now FTX, previously the third-largest cryptocurrency exchange, has collapsed at a dizzying speed — and along with it the finances and reputation of crypto’s golden boy, Sam Bankman-Fried, aka SBF.

In a few short days in early November, FTX went from a $32 billion–valued company with investments from the likes of BlackRock and Sequoia to bankruptcy. And SBF has gone from hobnobbing with Bill Clinton and Gisele Bündchen to “a fallen wreckage,” in his own words.