Meanwhile, even the most enthusiastic bitcoin evangelists are realizing that a retooling is in order. Michael J. Casey, a senior adviser for blockchain research at MIT’s Digital Currency Initiative, recently wrote about how the crypto-winter has arrived, but it may lead to better things down the line:
Like all cryptocurrencies, the majors are digital assets that secure and verify transactions using computer science and complex mathematics, known as cryptography. Unlike traditional (‘fiat’) currencies, they are not currently issued or backed by a central authority such as a government. Instead, they run across a network of computers and are underpinned by blockchain technology – a permanent record of transactions that cannot be altered without the consensus of the network.

It was originally known as the Matic Network when it first launched back in 2017.
As of 9:54 a.m. in New York, the overall market cap of cryptocurrencies hit $3.3 trillion, according to CoinGecko pricing. The third- and fourth-biggest tokens, Binance Coin and Solana, have added more than 20% in the past seven days; all of the seven biggest coins are up over the last week.