Everyone loves milestones, and Bitcoin (BTC -2.31%) recently hit a big one, surpassing $50,000 for the first time since late 2021. Bitcoin was under $20,000 not even a year ago. An urge to jump on board is understandable, as is a fear of buying Bitcoin after prices crashed a few years ago.
After all, Bitcoin's price still hasn't reached its former high of $68,790.
Don't let the agony of guessing Bitcoin's short-term price rattle you. If you're in this emotional bind right now, you're looking at things incorrectly. Here is how to look at Bitcoin as an investment and decide whether to buy at its current price.
Don't trade Bitcoin, own it
Bitcoin is similar to stocks in that short-term prices are based on little other than the whims of the market's buyers and sellers. Prices go up when more people want to buy Bitcoin and down when they want to sell it. Can you control people? Can you predict what someone else will do tomorrow, next week, or next month? Of course not. Yet people try to guess what day-to-day prices will do, even though the same unpredictable forces are dictating them.
You can trade Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies, but it's just glorified guessing and gambling.
Be an investor instead.
Investing means you believe in a long-term vision of what Bitcoin can become and what will increase its value over time. Ideally, you own Bitcoin because you think more people will use and desire it over time. That increased demand against Bitcoin's capped supply of 21 million coins means that prices will theoretically rise over time.
It hasn't been a straight line, but the long-term performance of Bitcoin has created remarkable amounts of wealth already.
Bitcoin Price data by YCharts
Are more people using Bitcoin?
A vision for the future doesn't make Bitcoin a cult. The facts have to match the theory. However, data supports that Bitcoin adoption is gradually spreading.
According to research from BTC Maps, the number of worldwide in-person merchants accepting Bitcoin as payment tripled to more than 6,000 in 2023. That doesn't include Bitcoin ATMs, of which there are an estimated 34,000 worldwide. Companies are also using technology to make Bitcoin viable as payment, including Coinbase's payment card that converts Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies from a user's Coinbase account to U.S. dollars at points of sale where Visa is accepted.
These numbers may still seem small, but consider how far things have come. Someone bought two pizzas using 10,000 bitcoins in 2010 (a transaction now worth more than $500 million), which some regard as the first real-world transaction using the crypto for payment. What will Bitcoin's usage look like 10 years from now?
Is Bitcoin a buy at $50,000?
The takeaway is that investors should look at the long-term potential of Bitcoin and not its short-term price to make their decision to buy or sell it. If you think Bitcoin will be more widely used 10 years from now, Bitcoin is a no-brainer buy at $50,000.
That doesn't mean you need to jump in with both feet. Bitcoin has historically been volatile, and it might stay that way for who knows how long. Consider steadily buying Bitcoin a little at a time. Sometimes the price will be up, sometimes down. The important thing is that your purchases will average out to a reasonable number over time.
If more people use Bitcoin during the coming years, you'll be glad you've been slowly accumulating it in your investment portfolio.
