Daily Mail

Youngsters’ savings hit as bitcoin slumps 60pc

- by Hugo Duncan

GULLIBLE youngsters are feared to have lost thousands of pounds betting on bitcoin.

The price of the digital currency soared from below $1,000 to nearly $20,000 last year – triggering a stampede to invest among fortune seekers.

But bitcoin has been in freefall ever since and crashed below $8,000 yesterday amid warnings that the ‘biggest bubble in human history’ has burst.

Analysts warned that those investors who ploughed money into bitcoin towards the end of last year when the price was close to its peak have been ‘burnt’.

Bitcoin has fallen 60pc since its peak just before Christmas and 40pc since the start of the year. It is feared that some of the biggest losers are millennial­s in their 20s and early 30s who got swept up in the hype surroundin­g bitcoin and gambled their lifesaving­s. Along with other so-called cryptocurr­encies, bitcoin has been promoted by the likes of reality TV star Paris Hilton.

But regulators, experience­d investors and financial market experts have long warned that the bitcoin bubble would burst – costing gullible investors a fortune.

Economist Nouriel Roubini, who was nicknamed Dr Doom after correctly predicting the 2008 financial crash, said: ‘The mother of all bubbles is now crashing.’

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