Markets set for ‘mother of all crashes’, warns investor Michael Burry

 Bitcoin prices tumbled as the famous investor who predicted the sub-prime mortgage crisis warned retail traders that the ‘mother of all crashes’ is on the horizon.

The crypto-currency slid 7 per cent to around $34,000 – its lowest level in two weeks – while others such as ethereum and dogecoin followed suit.

It came as Michael Burry warned that when the value of crypto-currencies and ‘meme stocks’ fall it will trigger market losses ‘the size of countries’. 

Warning: Top investor Michael Burry said that when the value of cryptocurrencies and so-called ‘meme stocks’ fall it will trigger market losses ‘the size of countries’

He was famously one of the few people to foresee the sub-prime mortgage bubble that triggered the 2008 financial crisis. The Big Short blockbuster film was about him and his hedge fund.

Digital currencies and popular stocks have exploded in value this last year – drawing in amateur retail investors who have never traded before.

But Burry, founder of private investment firm Scion Asset Management, and others, have warned this has created a bubble that will inevitably burst and harm traders who bought at the top of the market.

On Twitter, in posts that were later deleted, he said: ‘All hype/speculation is doing is drawing in retail before the mother of all crashes. 

‘When crypto falls from trillions, or meme stocks fall from tens of billions, Main Street losses will approach the size of countries. History ain’t changed.’

Last week he called crypto the ‘Greatest speculative bubble of all time in all things. By two orders of magnitude.’

Since last October bitcoin has rallied from around $10,000 to more than $63,000 in April.

It has since been in freefall after Elon Musk, the electric car tycoon, U-turned on his promise to accept bitcoin as payment for his vehicles, and China began a crackdown.

Beijing ordered banks and payment platform Alipay to stop services linked to crypto.