Bitcoin’s wild ride just got a bit wilder

NEW YORK : A 31% plunge in the morning. A 33% surge in the afternoon. Such was the wild ride bitcoin took investors on Wednesday, lopping off billions in value before comments from some prominent proponents helped propel it on a torrid rebound.

The extreme price swings in an asset known for its turbulence caused outages on major crypto exchanges and dominated chatter on Wall Street.

The tumult elicited a tweet from Elon Musk that implied Tesla Inc. wasn’t among the sellers, while Cathie Wood, founder and CEO of Ark Invest, an investment management firm, said her monitors flashed a “capitulation” that put the digital token “on sale.