Are you aware of any research on what makes bubbles pop, generally? Is there a tie that binds, or does each have its own circumstances that makes generalizing difficult?
Today must be bubblenalysis day! The Grumpy Economist opines on Bitcoin and Bubbles, with a jaw-dropping WSJ chart comparing 2017's 1000% rise in bitcoin to other "historically huge market moves." It seems unfair because all the other assets were decades old where the chart starts; bitcoin is not yet 10. In sum, what's going on with Bitcoin seems to me like a perfectly "normal" phenomenon. Intersect a convenience yield and speculative demand with a temporarily limited supply, plus temporarily limited supply of substitutes, and you get a price surge. Marginal Revolution asks Is Bitcoin just a bubble? with a hypothesis, similar but briefer than mine, starting with $241 trillion in wealth in the world. A comment mentions Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, which may be a good answer to your request for research on bubbles. Gutenberg linkThe first equation of asset pricing is that price = expected present value of dividends. Bitcoin has no cash dividends, and never will. So right off the bat we have a problem...
think of Bitcoin as competing for some of the asset space held by gold and also to some extent art. Gold, too, in its hedging functions is a “bubble,” though not a bubble. It is hard to ship, but has some extra value because it is perceived as a focal asset and one that does not covary positively in a simple way with the market portfolio. The same is true of Bitcoin, yet that kind of focality-based “bubbliness” can persist for centuries.
Another story is told of an English traveller, which is scarcely less ludicrous. This gentleman, an amateur botanist, happened to see a tulip-root lying in the conservatory of a wealthy Dutchman. Being ignorant of its quality, he took out his penknife, and peeled off its coats, with the view of making experiments upon it. When it was by this means reduced to half its size, he cut it into two equal sections, making all the time many learned remarks on the singular appearances of the unknown bulb. Suddenly, the owner pounced upon him, and, with fury in his eyes, asked him if he knew what he had been doing? “Peeling a most extraordinary onion,” replied the philosopher. “Hundert tausend duyvel!” said the Dutchman; “it’s an Admiral Van der Eyck.” “Thank you,” replied the traveller, taking out his note-book to make a memorandum of the same; “are these admirals common in your country?” “Death and the devil!” said the Dutchman, seizing the astonished man of science by the collar; “come before the syndic, and you shall see.” In spite of his remonstrances, the traveller was led through the streets followed by a mob of persons. When brought into the presence of the magistrate, he learned, to his consternation, that the root upon which he had been experimentalising was worth four thousand florins; and, notwithstanding all he could urge in extenuation, he was lodged in prison until he found securities for the payment of this sum.