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Schrödinger’s Bitcoin

Notwithstanding the recent spectacular surge in its price, Bitcoin will remain an asset without intrinsic value whose market value can be anything or nothing. Only those with healthy risk appetites and a robust capacity to absorb losses should consider investing in it.

NEW YORK – On February 8, Elon Musk’s electric-car firm Tesla announced that it had invested $1.5 billion of its cash reserves in Bitcoin back in January. The news helped to boost the cryptocurrency’s already skyrocketing price by a further 10%, to a record high of more than $44,000. But, especially in Bitcoin’s case, what goes up can just as easily come crashing down.

Bitcoin was invented in 2008 and began trading in 2009. In 2010, the value of a single Bitcoin rose from around eight-hundredths of a cent to eight cents. In April 2011, it traded at 67 cents, before subsequently climbing to $327 by November 2015. As recently as March 20 last year, Bitcoin traded at about $6,200, but its price has since increased more than sevenfold.

Today, Bitcoin is a perfect, 12-year-old bubble. I once described gold as “shiny Bitcoin,” and characterized the metal’s price as a 6,000-year-old bubble. That was a bit unfair to gold, which used to have intrinsic value as an industrial commodity (now largely redundant), and still does as a consumer durable widely used in jewelry.

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