Bitcoin prices fell below $8,000 (£5,650.48) today, for the first since November, sparking a market-wide panic about the future of the token.
BTC prices have been on a gradual decline since the start of the year, plummeting more than 40 percent, leading some investors to believe reality has finally caught up with the bitcoin bubble.
At 5.32pm GMT, bitcoin was exchanging hands at $8,718.66 (£6,158.95) per token, 3.69 percent down on the past 24 hours, according to CoinDesk.
Many senior analyst who have studied bitcoin’s rise through 2017, have now argued that the timer is now set on bitcoin.
American economist Nouriel Roubini, who saw the tell-tale signs of the imminent 2008 market crash, joined the choral of experts predicting bitcoin’s demise.
The expert, dubbed ‘Dr Doom’ by his peers, warned BTC’s sharp decline is in fact the beginning of a crash.
He said: “I say it’s the mother of all bubbles and it’s also the biggest bubble in human history if you compare it to the Mississippi Bubble, the Tech Bubble or Tulip Mania.”
Mr Roubini underlined the bitcoin bubble is in fact much worse than the infamous 17th century Tulip Mania.
He said: “It’s much worse. If you look at the peak, bitcoin was in a magnitude higher than the Tulip Mania and now it’s crashed by 60 percent compared to the peak of mid-December.
American economist Nouriel Roubini, who saw the tell-tale signs of the imminent 2008 market crash, joined the choral of experts predicting bitcoin’s demise.
The expert, dubbed ‘Dr Doom’ by his peers, warned BTC’s sharp decline is in fact the beginning of a crash.
He said: “I say it’s the mother of all bubbles and it’s also the biggest bubble in human history if you compare it to the Mississippi Bubble, the Tech Bubble or Tulip Mania.”
Mr Roubini underlined the bitcoin bubble is in fact much worse than the infamous 17th century Tulip Mania.
He said: “It’s much worse. If you look at the peak, bitcoin was in a magnitude higher than the Tulip Mania and now it’s crashed by 60 percent compared to the peak of mid-December.
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“It’s crashed 30 percent last week and 10 percent today, and it’s all the way down to zero.
I say it’s the mother of all bubbles and it’s also the biggest bubble in human history
“The fundamental value of bitcoin is zero.”
Since December 18, bitcoin prices suffered a 60 percent plunge on their peak price of $19,511 (£13,779.84).
But it is not just bitcoin that is suffering, and Mr Roubini argued that there are many more crypto tokens that are in a much worse position that bitcoin.
The economist said: “There are already something like 1,300 plus cryptocurrencies or Initial Coin Offerings (ICO’s).
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“Most of them are worse and don’t have any intrinsic value like bitcoin, so if bitcoin is a bubble, then they are a bubble to the power of two or three.
“And there is all this hype about blockchain saying, ‘ok maybe bitcoin and cryptocurrencies are a bubble or a fad, but blockchain is really a revolutionary industry’.
“It has been round for 10 years and the only application is bitcoin or cryptocurrencies are a scam.”
Other analysts have since joined to sound the alarm bells, feeding bitcoin’s detractors more ammunition.
Lukman Otunuga, research analyst at exchange broker Forextime Ltd, agreed on Friday that bitcoin’s future is looking uncertain.
He said: “Bitcoin is in trouble. Price action suggests that bears are clearly in control, with further losses on the cards as jitters over regulation erode investor appetite further.”
But Chris Wilmer, professor at the University of Pittsburgh and co-author of “Bitcoin for the Befuddled”, argued that price crash was to be expected.
He said: “We’ve been here a thousand times before, it’s gone up, it’s gone down, it’s not new.”
