Bitcoin dropped then spiked and dropped again in Wednesday morning trading. The pattern looked familiar to fans of America’s favourite lemon-toned television family.

"We joked about it – it was the Bart Simpson pattern where it jumps up like this and spikes around a little bit like Bart Simpson’s head,” said Justin Litchfield, chief technology officer at ProChain Capital, referring to the fictional son of Homer and Marge Simpson in one of the longest-running sitcoms on television, Fox’s The Simpsons. "It’s been doing that a lot lately with these really sharp spikes.”