The decentralization that promised to make cryptocurrencies accessible, transparent, and an everyman’s investment dream has turned into a nightmare for many. While professional investors have largely done well shorting blockchain stock, other individuals haven’t been as successful. Fortune wrote of “crypto carnage” in a market that has so far lost $1 trillion in this year’s market selloffs. Bitcoin has lost about 50 percent of its market value this year, while Ethereum has fallen by 56 percent since January. Last week, the European Union advanced a framework for crypto-assets that includes consumer protection and safeguards against cybercrime.

The provisional agreement for proposed Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) regulation also includes environmental measures, requiring crypto-asset service providers (CASPs) to disclose their energy consumption.

“MiCA is a European success. We are the first continent to have a crypto-asset regulation,” proclaimed German parliamentarian Stefan Berger in a statement. “In the Wild West of the crypto-world, MiCA will be a global standard setter.”

The provisional political agreement reached by the parliamentary negotiating team now moves to the Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee for approval, followed by a plenary vote. The European Council must also approve the measure.

With MiCA, “supervisory structures for new tokens are now being created for the first time,” according to Berger. “The EU’s MiCA Act is ‘quite frightening for the crypto industry,’” Paris-based crypto lawyer William O’Rorke of ORWL Avocats told Wired, adding, “we’ve never seen a financial sector being regulated so quickly.”

In the U.S., a bipartisan bill sponsored by senators Kirsten Gillibrand (D-New York) and Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyoming) is supported by crypto lobbyists. “On the other end of the spectrum is Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren, a fierce crypto critic who sponsored a bill calling for robust checks on cryptocurrency transactions in order to stop the evasion of sanctions against Russia,” writes Wired of the Digital Asset Sanctions Compliance Enhancement Act, introduced with bipartisan support in March.

“In the great cryptocurrency blood bath of 2022, Wall Street is winning,” reports The New York Times, explaining that commercial bank BNP Paribas bet cryptocurrencies would crash, and their institutional investors “are sitting pretty,” while “those on the other side of the trade — the small investors who loaded up on overpriced crypto assets and stocks during a retail trading boom — are reeling.”

Fortune feels crypto bulls who got in early may still come out ahead, predicting economic pain for “those who joined the party late.”

Americans have, on the whole, been wary of cryptocurrency, which represents only 0.3 percent of U.S. household wealth, according to Goldman Sachs as reported by Fortune. By contrast, stocks represent about 33 percent of household wealth.