Bitcoin’s arrival into the mainstream was accompanied by massive evaluations of altcoins, a short-lived ICO craze, and many misunderstandings about the vision and potential of Bitcoin.
Over the last year, numerous developments have unfolded that give more access to investing in Bitcoin and interacting with the legacy cryptocurrency than ever before.
While access to Bitcoin is still far from being ideal, options for investing in it are significantly greater than they were only several years ago. From the proliferation of exchanges to alternative means of acquiring it, evaluating various ways to invest in Bitcoin is worth your time and effort.
Bitcoin Price & Market
Bitcoin’s price has been volatile since its inception. Starting from the first purchase of a good or service using 10,000 bitcoins to buy a pizza, Bitcoin’s value has been a rollercoaster ride.
Bitcoin’s price skyrocketed towards the end of 2017 and peaked at roughly $20,000 in January 2018, causing a flurry of mainstream media coverage and questions about what precisely the novel digital currency was.
You can use our Bitcoin Price Chart page to view historic prices of BTC
To the majority of the mainstream, Bitcoin’s volatility bears too much risk to invest in it, although millennials have shown a favorable disposition towards swapping their hard earned money for some Bitcoin.
Over the last few months though, Bitcoin has been on a tear and recently breached it’s all time high price again. This has brought more mainstream attention and it now seems that finally, institutions are taking it seriously and allocating some of their dollars to the asset class.
Investing in Bitcoin has inherent risks that investors need to be aware of before purchasing it, and you can find extensive information on the original cryptocurrency all over the web today. If you’re interested in Bitcoin, the prudent approach is to do your own research and discover whether or not you are willing to enter an emerging market of digital assets that has no precedent.
Making small investments is a great way to start and learn about how to interact with wallets without overexposing yourself to the market’s volatility.
If you’re looking to invest in cryptocurrencies in general, choosing Bitcoin should be your first option. Its robustness is unparalleled in the industry and is one of its greatest, if not its cardinal, strength.
The general narrative around Bitcoin that has been molded over the years is that of ‘digital gold,’ where its predetermined issuance rate — controlled by its mining difficulty adjustment and decentralized network — provides significant advantages over fiat currencies in knowing that your investment will not be diluted through arbitrary inflation.
If you’re a newcomer to the Bitcoin and cryptocurrency space, seeking monetary refuge from hyper-inflationary economies, or an advanced user who believes in the ideological aspects of Bitcoin, there are several areas that you need to evaluate when investing in Bitcoin.
Take a look at our Complete Guide to Bitcoin if you need a primer on the History
Long-term Investing or “Hodling”
Many long-term ‘hodlers’ view Bitcoin as the hardest money available, and choose to store large amounts of their earnings in the cryptocurrency. Doing so presents risks, but from their perspective, it is one of the greatest investment opportunities in history and a legitimate means of value storage and transfer outside of the traditional financial world.
Their belief in Bitcoin as digital gold with a high stock-to-flow ratio is well-founded, and advances like Bitcoin’s LN may eventually enable the network to scale as the P2P digital cash originally envisioned by Satoshi Nakamoto.
Bitcoin Wallets
If you’re looking to store Bitcoin as a long-term investment, the best method to safeguard your coins is using a cold storage hardware wallet. Popular cold storage wallet brands include Trezor and Ledger, and they also offer support for other cryptocurrencies. Cold storage can even be beefed up with multisig services like Casa where signatures from multiple physical devices are required to unlock your stored Bitcoin.
Full Bitcoin clients are also viable means for long-term storage of bitcoins, but not as secure as cold wallet solutions. Besides purely investing in Bitcoin, you can support the decentralization and connectivity of the network by running a full node, which incorporates yourself into the Bitcoin core protocol that stores the entire blockchain.
Short-term holders who are looking to invest in Bitcoin in small amounts out of curiosity or for experimenting with sending/receiving it can opt to use hot and custodial wallets.
Third-parties control these wallets,
