The only technically-significant aspect of cryptocurrencies in relation to this story is that by the nature of the Bitcoin and Bitcoin-derivative architectures,

The only technically-significant aspect of cryptocurrencies in relation to this story is that by the nature of the Bitcoin and Bitcoin-derivative architectures, a massive fraud on the system can't be softened or ameliorated by a central bank printing money to make victims whole, since cryptos are "gold-standard"-style fixed-quantity currencies. Practically speaking, that makes something equivalent to FDIC insurance more expensive to implement; in theory, several brokers could join some kind of insurance group where they pay into a common pool of unused BTC to pay out in the event of fraud. I'm unaware of such an experiment being tried. History has shown that it's possible to wreck a fiat-currency-backed economy so badly that the nation-state's ability to print money can't be used to fix the problem, but in practice it seems in general difficult to do (whereas there have been multiple Bitcoin crashes and frauds where it'd have been nice to have a "Just issue those people BTC to cover their losses" solution, but that's not technically feasible).