An effort to improve crypto’s image.

At a cryptocurrency conference in Denver, Colorado, last month, singers took the stage to perform what one industry website described as an anthem for the crypto faithful.

The chorus was a list of crypto’s most notorious villains, from the trash-talking entrepreneur Do Kwon to the disgraced FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, punctuated by expletives.

“In the next bull market, we promise not to use,” the song goes, “centralized exchanges run by these toxic dudes.”

After a disastrous 2022, when prominent crypto firms imploded, the industry is angling for a rebrand.

At surviving firms, executives are looking for new ways to market products that many consumers now distrust, and to distance themselves from former colleagues and mentors who could face years in prison. Some companies are trying to capitalize on the growing interest around artificial intelligence, with crypto schemes that feature convoluted A.I. tie-ins. Others are looking to replace the word “crypto,” arguing that the term has become irredeemably tainted.

Crypto companies were “moving gradually towards changing the narrative” even before Mr. Bankman-Fried’s exchange failed in November, said Todd Irwin of Fazer, a branding agency. “After the FTX incident, the move has been turbocharged.”

The cleansing effort is a familiar routine in an industry that has experienced repeated booms and busts over its short history. Early advocates of Bitcoin had to convince the public and regulators that cryptocurrency was more than just a convenient tool for drug dealers. A major crypto boom in 2017 was followed by law enforcement scrutiny, as start-ups were exposed as scams.

The latest soul-searching has done little to turn the industry’s fortunes around. Since FTX’s demise, U.S. regulators have announced fines and other actions against several major crypto companies. The failures of two banking partners, Silvergate Capital and Signature Bank, have dealt a fresh blow to crypto start-ups.

And the industry is still struggling to demonstrate its practical value.

“Rebranding doesn’t solve the fundamental problem,” said Lee Reiners, a former supervisor at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York who now teaches at Duke Law School. “What is this good for? What problem does it solve?”

A year ago, the crypto industry was flush with cash. At his compound in the Bahamas last April, Mr. Bankman-Fried hosted a weeklong conference where attendees partied on the beaches. Among the guests: Su Zhu, a founder of the crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital, which failed a few weeks later when a market crash sent cryptocurrencies into free fall.

Now Mr. Bankman-Fried faces charges over his management of FTX, and industry executives are still navigating the fallout.

No crypto company is under more pressure than the exchange Binance, which is facing government investigations, as well as concerns about its financial stability and lack of cooperation with regulators. Last month, the exchange’s chief executive, Changpeng Zhao, unveiled Bicasso, a product that uses A.I. technology to make artwork in the form of nonfungible tokens, the digital collectibles known as NFTs.

In recent months, he and other industry figures have also posted videos on social media seemingly designed to separate themselves from erstwhile crypto heroes like Mr. Bankman-Fried. “Honor isn’t given,” Mr. Zhao declared in one post. “It’s earned.”

A similar distancing effort was underway in March at ETH Denver, a conference for advocates of Ethereum, the popular crypto platform. Jonathan Mann, a songwriter, performed the anthem denouncing 2022’s crypto villains.

“It was supposed to be a final letting go of all this toxicity and bad vibes and feelings of 2022,” Mr. Mann said. “I had everyone do breathing exercises before: ‘Close your eyes. Deep breath in, deep breath out. We’re going to cleanse ourselves.’ ”

For some crypto executives, ritualized cleansing is not enough. A few start-ups have abandoned crypto.

In late 2021, Troy Osinoff co-founded Zurp, hoping to simplify complex crypto investments for mainstream consumers. Zurp was preparing to launch last summer when the collapse of Luna, a popular cryptocurrency, triggered a broader market meltdown.

Mr. Osinoff decided to pause the rollout, and Zurp began developing a credit card that features perks tailored to Generation Z. Mr. Osinoff said he still hoped to incorporate crypto features into Zurp’s offerings, but only once sentiment improved.

“It’s already a hurdle to get people interested in crypto,” he said. “We’re just waiting for it to normalize.”

A shift to new tech, or just new terminology?