When the Blockchain Breaks: Marketing Resilience in the Event of a Cryptocurrency Collapse

What would happen to consumer trust, brand strategies, and digital ownership in the event of a systemic disruption to the cryptocurrency ecosystem? This paper explores the marketing implications of disruptions in crypto markets, focusing on how such shocks affect token-based brand engagement, loyalty architectures, and consumer psychology. Drawing on trust repair literature and recent empirical findings on NFTs, and using illustrative cases such as the FTX exchange collapse, the contraction of the NFT market, and the Frosties rug pull, we highlight how marketers can prepare for post-speculation realities. This perspective invites marketing scholars to reconsider the role of decentralized assets in consumer-brand relationships and calls for resilient digital marketing models under conditions of technological fragility.