Wild ride: Bitcoin plunges 31% at breakfast, surges 33% at lunch

Wednesday’s extreme price swings caused outages on major crypto exchanges and dominated chatter on Wall Street.

A 31% plunge in the morning. A 33% surge in the afternoon. Such was the wild ride Bitcoin took investors on Wednesday, lopping off billions in value before comments from some prominent proponents helped propel it on a torrid rebound. The extreme price swings in an asset known for its turbulence caused outages on major crypto exchanges and dominated chatter on Wall Street. The tumult elicited a tweet from Elon Musk that implied Tesla Inc. wasn’t among the sellers, while Cathie Wood said her monitors flashed a “capitulation” that put the digital token “on sale.” Justin Sun, a tech entrepreneur who founded the cryptocurrency platform Tron, tweeted that he bought $152 million in Bitcoin for around $37,000 a coin.