On Wednesday afternoon, the Bitcoin bubble appears to have burst. As of this writing, its current value is around $160—down from a high of $260. (It fell as low as $130 today.) There is no obvious explanation for why the digital currency has fallen so far and so fast, although the market correcting after such a huge rise might be a good explanation. (Update 4:05pm CT: Bitcoin seems to have somewhat recovered and appears to be hovering around $200.)

via Bitcoin crashes, losing nearly half of its value in six hours | Ars Technica.

More info from Slashdot and Techcrunch.  From:  Bitcoin Suffers A Correction Amid Apparent DDOS Attacks On Some Exchanges

This also happened last week when Mt. Gox when Bitcoin reached $142 and hackers attacked the exchange. At that point, Mt. Gox said it had suffered ”its worst trading lag ever.”