"To me, it's interesting as another example of faddish human behavior. It's glamorous," he added. The bitcoin craze reminds him of tulip mania in the 17th century, the event which is considered one of the first recorded speculative bubbles where a buying frenzy and lofty expectations replace rational justifications for an item's value.
I know that Robert Shiller is a Nobel prize winning economist, but one thing he specializes is human behavior in economics and investment and may be that the reason he is referring it as tulip mania, but with that reference we can very well tell that he does not have a clue what he is talking about, if he is talking about the entire alt coin market then it might be true, but it cannot be true with bitcoin as it is limited in circulation and there is no way you can compare it to tulip mania .