What Could Kill the Bitcoin Boom

If you bought a Bitcoin in early 2017, when one cost less than $900, you could have a profit of more than 1,200 percent now. But you almost certainly didn’t do that. Perhaps you dipped in a toe in November or December, as the price hit headline-grabbing records—$10,000, then $15,000, then higher. If you were very unlucky and bought at the peak of about $20,000 on Dec. 17, you’d have lost more than 40 percent of your money as of Jan. 16, when the price was $11,200. More than $2,000 of that decline came in about 24 hours, after South Korean Finance Minister Kim Dong-yeon indicated the country may crack down on cryptocurrency trading to discourage speculation. It’s not every asset that can feel like it’s in a bubble and a crash at the same time.

But based on no other valuation metric than what it cost a year ago, the price of Bitcoin is still dizzyingly high. For the many doubters who can’t believe things have come this far—and for Bitcoin owners who can see how much they might lose—the big question is what it would take to knock the price back further.