Unlike the money you save in a bank insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), “If a virtual currency company fails – and many have – the government will not cover the loss,” the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau warned in a 2014 notice about cryptocurrency (its most recent guidance).
Mistakes like this happen throughout finance when, for instance, traders mess up details of their intended trades, entering the wrong price or order size. An erroneously large trade, as one example, can overwhelm an exchange's order book, leading to a quick and massive decline. The entire U.S. stock market famously flash crashed back in May 2010, though equities have mostly avoided trouble since that era.

“Some people just didn’t like it, and I understand that,” Karony said in the interview. “The points that I wanted to come across, we just weren’t able to actually tell people in a structured manner.”
As the record of a cryptocurrency’s entire transaction history to date, a blockchain has a finite length — containing a finite number of transactions — that increases over time.