Bitcoin fell below $12,000 as predicted by experts

Bitcoin plunged by a quarter to below $12,000 on Friday as investors dumped the cryptocurrency in manic trading after its blistering ascent to a peak close to $20,000 prompted warnings by experts of a bubble.It capped a brutal week that had been touted as a new era of mainstream trading for the volatile digital currency when bitcoin futures debuted on CME Group Inc, the world s largest derivatives market on Sunday.Friday s steep fall bled into the US stock market, where shares of companies that have recently lashed their fortunes to bitcoin or blockchain - its underlying technology - took a hard knock in early trading.The biggest and best-known cryptocurrency had seen a staggering twentyfold increase since the start of the year, climbing from less than $1,000 to as high as $19,666 on the Luxembourg-based Bitstamp exchange on Sunday and to over $20,000 on other exchanges.