Bitcoin bloodbath: Cryptocurrency plunges 20% in two days
(CNN)

Michel Rauchs, who researches cryptocurrency and blockchain at the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance, said the explosive rise in prices in 2017 attracted a wave of inexperienced investors.

“Retail investors, students, housewives, even grandma was driven in by the hype,” says Rauchs. “They were told by the media that this was an opportunity of a lifetime. They bought at the top and are now sitting on heavy losses.”

The crash has left professional investors and enthusiasts debating where cryptocurrencies go from here.

“Clearly the frenzy that we have seen and the volatility in the price of bitcoin … resembles a lot of other financial bubbles that happen over and over again in our economic history,” said Benedetto De Martino, a behavioral economist at University College London.