Tuur Demeester â publisher of the Dutch-language investment newsletter MacroTrends â began advising his readers to buy bitcoins back when the currency was trading at just $5 (US) per BTC. But even at todayâs prices ($120.50 as of mid-day on May 19), he says he believes Bitcoin remains a very good investment.
The current high price is not a bubble, Demeester asserts. He points to the fact that past price peaks â despite having sometimes been followed by steep drops â have now been surpassed.
âObviously there is something wrong with this idea that Bitcoin would be what is traditionally considered a bubble,â he says.
Because cryptocurrency is a technology, Demeester expects Bitcoinâs adoption to follow the typical S-curve seen in other new technologies. In fact, he notes, that is what we are seeing so far.
âThis parabolic rise in price weâre seeing over time shouldnât really surprise us,â he says.
The price fluctuations are scary only to the uninformed investor, Demeester says. He dismisses fear of perpetual volatility as unfounded.
Demeester reasons that itâs the youth of the fast-rising market attracting speculators that cause price gyrations during this stage. Another short-term cause of todayâs volatility, he adds, is that the fledgling companies providing Bitcoin services are not yet prepared for sudden increases in volume. These technical hiccups can cause price drops now, he says, but they wonât be a perpetual issue.
âThe Bitcoin economy as a whole is growing and we are seeing the embryonic start of a financial system in itself,â Demeester says. âFor the investor, that means in the future youâll be very likely to ⦠buy commodities, futures and shares with bitcoin.â
This will make holding bitcoins as an investment much more practical, he says.
After all, Demeester says, bitcoin is a new commodity. He looks back to other instances when a new commodity â petroleum, for example â was introduced to the world market. Showing a graph of oil prices beginning in 1860, he points out how petroleum prices gyrated wildly in the first decades of trading, before settling into a more regular pattern.
Although he expects the Bitcoin market to stabilize over time like petroleum did, Demeester doesnât expect the digital currency to follow an exactly parallel path. The reason he gives? Oil, he says, has become more plentiful over the years, but bitcoinâs supply is forever limited.
Thatâs just one reason Demeester recommends that all investors should hold at least a few bitcoins.