Evidence strongly supports Friedberg’s prediction that the crypto bubble would effectively burst in 2022 and that the vast majority of tokens would suffer massive value destruction.

By mid‑June 2022, data from CoinGoLive reported that 13,240 of 13,436 cryptocurrencies (≈98.5%) were down more than 90% from their all‑time highs, and about 95.5% had fallen more than 99.99%, i.e., had effectively gone to zero. This was summarized by Crypto Briefing under the headline “Almost Every Crypto Asset Is Down Over 90% From Peak.” (cryptobriefing.com) That directly matches the claim that ~90% of projects/tokens would “blow up” (collapse or experience major declines) during 2022.

Mainstream coverage at the end of 2022 also described the cycle as a popped bubble: The Washington Post wrote in December 2022 that there was “the sense that the crypto bubble has definitively popped,” in the context of a 2021–2024 crypto crash and a roughly 70% drawdown in total market cap from the 2021 peak. (en.wikipedia.org) The bursting was driven in part by rising interest rates and risk‑asset deleveraging; for example, the U.S. Federal Reserve’s May 4, 2022 half‑point rate hike was cited alongside the broader sell‑off in speculative assets, including crypto. (en.wikipedia.org)

2022 also saw multiple marquee failures that accelerated the collapse of many tokens and projects: the Terra/UST–LUNA death spiral in May 2022, in which LUNA fell from an all‑time high of about $119 to “virtually zero,” wiping out roughly $40–45 billion in market value (en.wikipedia.org), and the November 2022 bankruptcy of FTX, then the third‑largest exchange, which triggered further contagion across lenders and tokens. (en.wikipedia.org) These events are consistent with his description of widespread “scammy nonsense” and large numbers of projects failing once leverage and easy money dried up.

Data on project survival rates also line up with his “90% won’t make it” framing. CoinGecko data summarized in 2023 showed that 1,866 of the 6,300 cryptocurrencies listed in 2022 were already classified as “dead” within about a year, and 4,367 of 2021‑listed projects had also died, underscoring that the majority of new projects quickly failed or were abandoned. (reddit.com) Other analyses based on Nomics data noted that by October 2022, more than 12,100 cryptocurrency projects had stopped operating in the bear market. (reddit.com)

Finally, Friedberg’s secondary claim—that a small minority of projects would endure and have long‑term value—is directionally borne out as of late 2025. Bitcoin, for example, trades around $91,000, above its 2021 peak, indicating that at least some large, established networks have survived the crash and later appreciated again, while thousands of smaller tokens remain dead or near‑worthless. (reddit.com)

Taken together—near‑universal 90%+ drawdowns in 2022, large numbers of projects becoming effectively or formally dead, clear recognition in contemporaneous reporting that the “crypto bubble” had popped, and a minority of major projects persisting—the prediction that the 2022 crypto bubble would burst and roughly 90% of projects would blow up while a few survive is best judged as right.