When, back in 2013, the Winklevii twins bought up what they claimed was one percent of bitcoin’s dollar-value equivalent, they acknowledged that the move was risky. “We could be totally wrong,” Tyler Winklevoss said at the time. “But we are curious to see this play out a lot more.” It took a few years, but their initial $11 million investment—using part of the settlement money they received from Facebook C.E.O. Mark Zuckerberg—has turned them into the first bitcoin billionaires in the wake of the cryptocurrency’s stratospheric rise. Though experts have long forecast a bitcoin bubble akin to tulips and gold rushes, the cryptocurrency has continued to gain steam, smashing records despite its marked volatility, and steamrolling through a series of red flags that could indicate a reckoning on the horizon.

In the past year, bitcoin’s price has risen more than 1,500 percent, but that increase has been marked by fluctuation: last week, its price dropped $1,000 in 10 minutes, falling below $10,000 after hitting its then-all-time high of over $11,000. This week, bitcoin crossed $14,000 before skyrocketing to $19,000, its current record. Coinbase, which crashed briefly on Thursday due to overwhelming traffic, has shot up to the top of App Store rankings. Understanding of blockchain technology notwithstanding, celebrities like Paris Hilton, Floyd Mayweather, and Jamie Foxx have hopped aboard the cryptocurrency train. “Nbd asking Warren Buffett his thoughts on cryptocurrency,” Katy Perry captioned an Instagram picture of herself with the Berkshire Hathaway C.E.O. last week.

Cryptocurrency mania has likewise crept into mature financial markets, despite the fact that it represents less than two percent of any other major asset class. Firms like Goldman Sachs are exploring ways to help its own clients trade digital tokens. Other legacy firms have proven more resistant; though at one point J.P. Morgan was reported to be considering bitcoin futures trading despite C.E.O. Jamie Dimon’s claims that bitcoin is “a fraud”, it will not immediately clear bitcoin trades for its clients when futures markets open next week.

But the majority of bitcoin investors are millennials and counterculture tech types—“amateurs who are interested in the technology,” as Ihor Dusaniwsky of financial firm S3 Partners put it to Axios. Meaning that once futures markets open next week, Wall Street will pounce on bitcoin, potentially shorting the market and leading to a price correction. “Current bitcoin holders are the gazelles in the plain,” Dusaniwsky added, “and the tigers and lions are about to get released.” Seemingly nothing can dampen enthusiasm for bitcoin, however—not news that a cloud-based crypto-mining firm, NiceHash, was hacked for more than $60 million, nor the fact that Steam, the U.S.’s largest online gaming shop, said it would stop accepting bitcoin as a form of payment, citing its volatility.

Bitcoin’s truest believers think it’s above any impending correction at all, citing the historical determinist technology on which it relies. “Bubbles are mathematically impossible in this new paradigm,” John McAfee tweeted on Thursday. “So are corrections and all else.” The self-fulfilling nature of bitcoin’s future worth is being treated by its most optimistic backers as an inevitability. Whether that optimism holds remains to be seen.