The price of Bitcoin has plummeted further. On 15th January, the official trading price fell by 5%, dropping further to 20% by 16th January. By evening, the value of Bitcoin had fallen by more than 40%, and on the 17th, the value of Bitcoin had sunk even further, depreciating by 50%.

At the blame of all this bad news, is of course, South Korea who previously threatened to ban trading of cryptocurrencies. China – who had also previously halted exchanges and ensured mining operations were harder – is also said to be taking more processes to crackdown on digital currencies.

Moreover, Critics are also blaming the plummeting figures as a direct connection to the fact that Bitcoin as a currency, just doesn’t work. Reports describe users who have waited over 50 minutes to complete transactions and many question what the value-holding capacity of Bitcoin is. Whilst some compare Bitcoin to gold, it cannot be denied that bitcoin doesn’t have any value beyond marginal industrial uses.

So, with trading value up in the air, is bitcoin simply a huge experiment? One thing that can be said, if the internal and external governing challenges continue, no one knows how long this investment will last.