The price of bitcoin is hovering under $70,000 as of Tuesday afternoon. It’s recovered just a hair after tanking last week, but still lost 40% of its value after peaking at $122,000 last fall.

It’s a similar story with other cryptocurrencies like Ether, and it’s has left investors asking why did this happen, and why now?

Susan Kamenar, in Denver, Colorado, said she got into cryptocurrency around 2018 for one main reason: FOMO.

She doesn’t have her whole life savings in there, just an amount she was willing to gamble with. But even so, when the price dropped last week?

“I definitely freaked out, had a little mini panic attack inside. I’d never seen it tank that fast and that dramatically before,” Kamenar said.

But she isn’t ready to let the dream die quite yet.

“Ultimately, I was still in the green, so I decided to hold. It’s already plateaued and kind of bounced back to the 70-mark. This is not the dip to end all dips, there’s no way,” Kamenar said.

Others are not so sure. Paul Krugman, an economics professor at City University of New York, said this could be what he calls “Crypto Fimbulwinter.”

“In Norse mythology, the Fimbulwinter is the three-year-long winter that precedes the end of days. So it’s kind of like the final winter,” he said.

Krugman said Bitcoin has had 17 years to prove itself, and maybe time is up.

“How often can you convince people that something is the currency of the future, where is the actual use?” he said. “It was supposed to be a safe haven, something that people would buy when deeply concerned. But we’re not seeing that, it’s behaving like a speculative tech stock.”

Some crypto optimists will give Krugman that.

“We saw a narrative basically fall apart; the narrative that bitcoin is a protection against inflation and government spending run amok, but actually with every business cycle we see that this was not true,” said Igor Pejic, a tech analyst and author of “Tech Money.”

When times are good, people pile into crypto. When times are panicky, people stampede out.

And there is a lot of anxiety about artificial intelligence disruption and AI bubbles and, well, just the world. But that means there will be non-panicky times again one day.

“I think this is just a temporary impact,” Pejic said.

Bitcoin adoption in the U.S., U.K. and Europe fell from 17% in July to 12% in December, according to surveys by Deutsche Bank Research.

But it does still hold a lot of value, even after tanking.

“If I look at the price of bitcoin since 2023, it has increased by 370%,” said Marion Laboure, a senior strategist at Deutsche Bank Research and co-author of “Democratizing Finance.”

Some of Bitcoin’s hypergrowth was what she calls “the Tinkerbell effect” — basically, wishful thinking. But with that fading, the original cryptocurrency is still fairly entrenched at this point.

“Ten years ago, it was a speculative asset. Now it’s becoming much more an institutional reality,” Laboure said.

Institutional investors may be part of the reason Bitcoin tanked so hard. These investors sometimes invest on borrowed money and have to repay it in a hurry. And those investors will be back, said Beto Aparicio, senior strategic finance manager at OffChain Labs, which is developing a type of crypto infrastructure.

They’ll be back, in part, because regulators are becoming more crypto-friendly.

“Governments around the world are actively defining crypto regulations. Everyone is trying to make sure we have some support,” he said.

So maybe we’re in crypto Fimbulwinter, or maybe it’s just a cold snap.

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