Will the government start regulating bitcoin?

Bitcoin, the cryptocurrency, has soared against the dollar more than 1,600 percent over the past year. Other cryptocurrencies such as ethereum are up even more. Public curiosity about digital currencies has soared twentyfold, as gauged by Google trends.

An industry has sprung up to try to capitalize on this new technology, bringing a mix of savvy investors, prospectors, and hucksters. Staid companies such as 130-year-old Eastman Kodak have added cryptocurrency-related lines of businesses, and have seen their stocks soar.

Dogecoin, a cryptocurrency launched in 2013 as a joke playing off a popular meme featuring a Shiba Inu dog, this month saw the dollar value of its “coins” exceed $2 billion.

Huge price gains. Major public excitement. A media frenzy. Envy of the early adopters who are now, at least in the crypto world, billionaires. All tell-tale signs of a bubble, as listed by economist Robert Shiller, who won the Nobel Prize for his work on financial bubbles.

One last mark of a bubble, according to the checklist Shiller laid out in 2013, is the belief in theories that the economy has entered a “new era” to justify price increases that have no precedent or basis in underlying business.

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