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New York
 — 

This was supposed to be the year cryptocurrency, a 16-year-old asset that promised to be the future of finance, came into its own.

The multi-trillion-dollar industry got just about everything on its wish list over the past year: a rush of new money from mainstream investors, industry-approved bipartisan legislation in Congress, a rubber-stamp regulatory apparatus, and, not least, the full-throated support of the president of the United States.

Despite that, crypto has had a rough…