https://techcrunch.com/2022/07/06/as-deezer-goes-public-via-spac-is-the-blank-check-boom-really-over/ > From the next big thing to rueful error, the global SPAC market has had a big few years. So-called blank check companies, which take a skeleton corporation public with the aim of later merging with a private entity, can offer a quick path to the world’s stock markets. They can also, as we’ve relearned in recent quarters, incinerate shareholder wealth and potentially expose retail investors to outsized risk. > The 2020-2021 period of excess investor ebullience led to a surge in SPAC listings and, later, combinations. The result of the flurry of deals, centered in the United States, is largely a series of smoking craters on the public markets. This is not news, entirely. It has been some time since TechCrunch declared the SPAC wave a failure, at least in terms of taking a useful portion of the unicorn backlog public; the tally of startups worth $1 billion or more that need to find an exit grows every month, a trend that SPACs were unable to halt.