Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Shiller thinks the controversial cryptocurrency bitcoin won’t last forever.

The Yale economics professor predicts that bitcoin could go extinct within the next 100 years.

"Bitcoin won't look anything like it is today. It will have a different name, if it exists," Shiller recently told CNBC.

"There will have been many hard forks changing it and changing it. And, it'll be a matter of dispute whether it exists or not," said Shiller, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences with Eugene Fama and Lars Peter Hansen in 2013.

And while the digital currency may continue to survive for the near future, it won’t be easy, said Shiller, who helped develop the widely-followed S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices.

"The one scenario is that something like what happened after 2013 when bitcoin topped $1,000, and then lost 80 percent of its value. It looked like bitcoin was just fading away," he added. "It's so hard to predict these things," he said, repeating his belief that bitcoin "looks like a bubble," said Shiller, who developed the cyclically adjusted price-earnings (CAPE) ratio market valuation measure, which is calculated using price divided by the index's average historical 10-year earnings, adjusted for inflation.

To be sure, trouble just may loom in the cryptocurrency paradise.

While the Wall Street establishment debates whether cryptocurrencies will become a profit center or a legal liability, some employees have gotten wealthy enough from personal investments in digital assets to turn their backs on promising jobs at top firms, Bloomberg reported. 

A small but growing group of finance professionals has built up a big enough financial cushion to eschew the safety net of a monthly salary.

Instead of heading to the beach or squandering their trading proceeds on luxurious living, some of the new digitally-moneyed have become such ardent believers in the power of blockchain, the technology behind Bitcoin and other digital assets, that they’re starting their own businesses. Ahmad says he now helps run a fund that invests in blockchain ventures with a positive social or environmental impact.