Elsewhere, others remain hopeful the latest bitcoin price plunge will be short-lived and can be remedied with increased institutional involvement and regulatory oversight of the cryptocurrency space.

“Bitcoin’s latest plunge is evidence of the need for greater regulatory oversight to give a boost to investor confidence,” said Herbert Sim, the chief commercial officer at Cryptology, a cryptocurrency exchange based in Singapore. “There is already a huge amount of capital tied up in cryptocurrencies, in excess of $100 billion, so why allow it to continue being a rogue market?

“In order for the space to move forward and investor confidence to settle, regulators need to put standards in place to separate the weeds from the roses in the cryptocurrency world. Having oversight of the cryptocurrency Wild West will legitimize, and subsequently stabilize the industry, which will allow it to reach the next step of maturity.”

“There’s still a lot of people in this game,” Stephen Innes, head of trading for Asia Pacific at Oanda, told Bloomberg last week. “If we start to see a run down toward $3,000, this thing is going to be a monster. People will be running for the exits.”