The Destruction Index
A comprehensive damage assessment of the SPAC bubble. Every metric computed from real data — total value destroyed, sector death rates, the price funnel from $10 to $0, sponsor track records, and the year the reckoning arrived.
Total Value Destroyed
$169.8B
Peak market cap of all bankrupt SPACs
Bankruptcies
59
Out of 1,320 tracked SPACs
Avg Time to Bankruptcy
22 months
Fastest: American Virtual Cloud Technologies (-1mo)
Year of Reckoning
2023
29 bankruptcies in one year
Sector Death Rates
Percentage of SPACs that went bankrupt by sector
The $10 to $0 Funnel
Where every SPAC dollar ended up — from trust value to current price tier
Sponsor Track Records
How serial sponsors fared across multiple SPACs
Year of Reckoning
When the SPAC bankruptcies actually hit
The Bottom Line
The SPAC boom of 2020-2021 was the largest wealth transfer from retail investors to insiders in modern market history. Sponsors who put up as little as $25,000 walked away with founder shares worth millions, while the companies they brought public destroyed tens of billions in shareholder value.
The destruction wasn't evenly distributed. EV and clean energy SPACs bore the brunt, with bankruptcy rates exceeding 60% in some sectors. The median time from SPAC IPO to bankruptcy was under 3 years — barely enough time for the lockup periods to expire and insiders to sell their shares.