Amidst the uncertainty surrounding Bitcoin, Yale Professor of Economics Robert Shiller said, in a CNBC interview on January 18th, that he does not know what to make of the phenomenon. Earlier on he called the cryptocurrency "a Bubble", and he also said it had no real value unless somebody gave it one, unlike physical commodities such as gold and silver.

Comparing Bitcoin to "tulip mania" – one of the most famous speculative bubble collapses, which happened in Holland in 1637, Nobel Laureate Shiller said a similar thing could happen to Bitcoin, and it would not surprise him. He also said to CNBC interviewer Brian Kelly that he could be wrong, and the digital currency could stick around for the next 100 years.

There was a two-day slump for Bitcoin last week, before it made a bit of a recovery at $12,000. Professor Shiller made a similar comment about the bubble effect a while ago, and the price since then has risen by more than 160 percent. Could it be that the Yale Professor's comments will come back to haunt him as Bitcoin becomes trusted and stable in the future? That would perhaps explain why he hedged his bets on CNBC.