The Nobel prize-winning economist Robert Shiller has said bitcoin will not be a “permanent feature” of the financial world, as politicians indicated that a clampdown on cryptocurrencies was coming.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Thursday, Shiller hailed bitcoin as a “really clever idea”. But although he was impressed with the technology behind it, he was concerned that it had “gone viral as a currency”.

“I tend to think of bitcoin as an experiment. It is an interesting experiment, but it’s not a permanent feature of our lives,” said Shiller, who has previously warned that the bitcoin price could collapse. “We are over-emphasising bitcoin, we should expand it out to blockchain, which will have other applications.”