Cumulative inflation since 1998 is about ~83%, so that's part of it. There are other parallels to LTCM, too. Once the Alameda balance sheet leaked, people could

Cumulative inflation since 1998 is about ~83%, so that's part of it. There are other parallels to LTCM, too. Once the Alameda balance sheet leaked, people could see exactly what coins they had and where they were vulnerable. And most of the risk came from their FTT token, where their holdings would have taken years to sell at the average daily value traded. Thus other traders could start shorting FTT to catalyze the fall, just like what happened to LTCM's illiquid "off the run" bond positions: (Source: https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB968629287803799708 https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB968629287803799708 ) ____________ Badly in need of a lift, Meriwether called an old friend, Vinny Mattone, who had been the fund's first contact at Bear Stearns, LTCM's clearing broker. Mattone, who had retired, was everything that J.M.'s elegant professors were not. He wore a gold chain and a pinkie ring, and he showed up at Long-Term in a black silk shirt, open at the chest. He looked as if he weighed 300 pounds. Unlike J.M.'s strangely wooden partners, Mattone saw markets as exquisitely human institutions -- inherently volatile, ever-fallible. "Where are you?" Mattone asked bluntly. "We're down by half," Meriwether said. "You're finished," Mattone replied, as if this conclusion needed no explanation. For the first time, Meriwether sounded worried. "What are you talking about? We still have two billion. We have half -- we have Soros." Mattone smiled sadly. "When you're down by half, people figure you can go down all the way. They're going to push the market against you. They're not going to roll [refinance] your trades. You're finished."