Bitcoin is now sizing up to be what could be the biggest market bubble of all time.
According to Birinyi Associates, bitcoin now looks to be bigger than any of the 10 other market bubbles it studied including the the tech bubble, beanie babies, the Dow in 1929 and the silver bubble of the late 1970s.
Bitcoin was trading at about $16,235 Thursday morning, rising from $1,000 at the start of the year, and $11,000 at the beginning of last week.
Just last week, bitcoin was the third largest of the 10 events Birinyi studied. It was third behind an 18th-century French financing scheme around the development of the Mississippi Valley, known as the Mississippi bubble, and the one-day 31 percent surge in Qualcomm in December 1999. According to Birinyi Associates, it was a Wall Street analyst's call for a $1,000 target that set Qualcomm shares on fire.
The cryptocurrency market goes beyond bitcoin, but none has appealed to the broader, general public in quite the same way.
Wall Street has been late in catching up to the individual investors and cryptocurrency traders who expect bitcoin to keep surging. Three exchanges have rushed to launch bitcoin products. Futures started trading Sunday on the Cboe, with a separate contract expected to launch at the CME this weekend. Nasdaq also plans to offer futures next year.