Bitcoin investors aren’t having a happy new year, as the price of the cryptocurrency continues to slide from its record pre-Christmas highs.

In what was generally a slow day of trading, bitcoin dropped as much as 9 percent, to $13,440, as of 4 p.m. EST, with the price showing little movement since, sitting at $13,462 as of 10:15 p.m. Exchanges in Asia, which often lead the way in driving bitcoin’s price and where it’s no longer New Year’s Day, showed similar trends. Bitcoin’s price hardly moved, though exchanges in Japan and Thailand had bitcoin trading at around a $1,000 price premium when converting local currencies to U.S. dollars — not an untypical gap between exchanges.

The small bear market for bitcoin comes as various commentators continue to dismiss bitcoin’s viability going forward. The latest on the list of bitcoin critics is David Stockman, President Ronald Reagan’s former director of the Office of Management, who CNBC reported is “warning investors that the cryptocurrency boom will end disastrously.”

“It’s basically a class of really stupid speculators who have convinced themselves that trees grow to the sky,” Stockman said. “It will burn out in a spectacular crash. All of these latter-day speculators will have their hands burned to a crisp, and they will learn the proper lesson.”

Stockman also had some interesting things to say about bitcoin futures contracts being offered on CBOE and CME, saying that they don’t give bitcoin legitimacy. “Anytime Wall Street sees an opportunity to shear the sheep, and they see the sheep stampeding to the slaughter, they line up with some new gimmick to take advantage of the circumstances. That’s all,” Stockman said. “There is nothing that’s being validated by the opening up of a futures market. It’s just everybody trying to get on the train for the ride.”

The lull in frenzied bitcoin trading has also seen a reemergence of conspiracy theories as to why bitcoin’s price rose so rapidly in 2017. Investopedia reported that some believe the market may have been manipulated by North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.

It is known that North Korea did take an interest in bitcoin last year, with reports that the rogue country had started mining bitcoin in July and another report in September suggesting that the country was actively attempting, sometimes successfully, to hack bitcoin exchanges.

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