WHY INVEST IN BITCOIN: SOARING PRICE - According to FINTECH INVESTMENT NEWS
WHY INVEST IN BITCOIN: SOARING PRICE
Bitcoin reached its first all-time high on November 29, 2013, when it was valued at $1,137. Since then it has experienced various highs and lows, but 2017 is certainly shaping up to be the year of bitcoin.
Case in point, bitcoin has reached several all-time highs in 2017 and soared above $5,000 an ounce on September 1 to $5,013–representing a 402 percent increase from $997 in January.
If you’re still asking yourself “why invest in bitcoin?” perhaps consider this. With the rising price of the cryptocurrency over the last couple of years, bitcoin has begun rivalling safe-haven assets, such as gold and silver. Case in point, bitcoin surged ahead of the gold price for the first time ever in March 2017 (at the time, bitcoin was $1,268 while the precious metal was $1,233 an ounce).
As such, analysts have even suggested that bitcoin might be the place to put your money instead of gold. Chris Burniske, blockchain products lead with ARK Investment Management, is one of them.
In an interview with CoinDesk, Burniske said that global supply of the yellow metal has “clandestinely increased” one-to-two percent over the last 100 years or so.
“If you were to ask people what gold’s supply schedule looks like over time, they probably wouldn’t draw you something that looks like an exponential curve,” he said. “With gold being sneakily inflationary, it’s not set up to preserve value in the way that bitcoin is.”
Of course, there are certainly advantages to gold that bitcoin doesn’t have, and vice versa. Noted by Forbes, bitcoin supply is limited at 21 million, while gold supply increases as its price does, which could be a motivator for miners to mine the yellow metal.
As a result of the bitcoin supply limit, in August bitcoin cash was introduced to split from the main bitcoin to help facilitate quicker transactions.
At the time of its launch, Charles Hayter, founder of CryptoCompare, said in an interview with CNBC that bitcoin cash as a “pivotal moment” for cryptocurrencies
“The inception of Bitcoin Cash may prove to be exactly what Bitcoin needs,” Hayter said.
Still–bitcoin’s price increase is certainly impressive no matter which way you look at it.