DON SURBER: Worst timing in the world.

Coinbase ran a commercial during the NBA finals game last night that mocked tweets that said “crypto is dead.”

This morning, Coinbase laid off 18% of its staff. Its stock has plunged from a high of $357.39 on November 9 to $49.72 seven months later.

CNBC reported, “Coinbase is laying off almost a fifth of its workforce amid a collapse in its stock and crypto prices.

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Is crypto dead?

Well, are railroads?

To be sure, hundreds of railroads died along the way. The list of failures includes the Salt Lake and Pacific Railroad.

But railroads continue to operate because we need them. 28% of the freight in the USA moves by rail as the nation is crisscrossed by 140,000 miles of track.

As for dot.coms, some of the old ones died out but new ones keep popping up, don’t they?

What these stock market crashes — bear markets as they call them — do is winnow the market. The strong survive. The weak don’t. Nobody is too big to fail. Ask Lehman Brothers how that works.

Or Enron.

Read the whole thing.