Why Is Bitcoin (Still) Worth So Much?

In 12 years, the price of Bitcoin has gone from $0.0008 to nearly $69,000, only to crash back down to below $20,000 in 2022.

In other words, the value of Bitcoin is like Christian Bale’s physique between acting roles: all over the place and at times, slightly concerning.

Source: ScreenRant

Fast forward to today, and Bitcoin is sitting at $21,205. That’s a pretty clear sign that we’re still in the middle of a crypto recession, often referred to as the “Crypto Winter.”

But if you zoom out, the fact that Bitcoin is worth more than a brand new Kia Soul raises other questions:

• Where does Bitcoin get its value?
• Why is Bitcoin (still) worth so much?
• Finally, where is the value of Bitcoin going?

Let’s discuss why Bitcoin is (still) worth so much in late 2022.

Bitcoin Isn’t Valued Like Traditional Assets… At All

To understand the valuation of an investable asset like Bitcoin, it helps to compare it to something more traditional. If anything, the direct comparison will serve to illustrate why Bitcoin’s price valuation over time is less predictable than a pig on LSD. 

Now, if you sit down with a good financial analyst and give her enough time and coffee, she can generally explain why traditional assets are valued what they’re valued. Why are shares of GOOGL worth so much today? Why has the value of my condo risen so much? 

Here’s what she’d have to say: 

How Stocks Are Valued

The calculation of a specific share price is extremely complex, diving into a plethora of factors, algorithms, and formulae like P/E ratios, market cap, dividend discount models (DDMs), and more. 

What’s easier to grasp are the factors that go into these formulae and affect share prices on a daily basis. These often include company performance, supply and demand, dividend announcements, management performance, the global economy, the local economy, market players and competition, patent approval, speculation, government regulation, activity from fellow investors, and public perception.

And many, many more. Now, although the list of factors driving share prices is long, diverse, and complex on its own, many of the factors are measurable and predictable. 

By being able to somewhat predict the future performance of a stock, investors are able to design what are known as asymmetric risk profiles — meaning they can stack the cards in their favor. Ever wonder why despite the volatility of the stock market, your retirement account tends to consistently provide 7% returns each year? That’s because some smart person (or AI) has invested your money using an asymmetric risk profile — rather than win or lose big, they win a little bit every single time. 

Read more: 11 Myths Of Stock Market Investing, Debunked

How Real Estate Is Valued

Some folks prefer investing in real estate over the stock market because the list of factors driving real estate prices is a bit smaller and easier to understand.

Those factors may include supply and demand, interest rates, inventory, demographics, generational preferences, the overall economy, and the availability of government assistance.

The list gets a bit more complex for commercial real estate versus residential, but by and large, the value of a house shares a lot in common with the value of a share price. They’re both:

1. Based on real-world factors;
2. Measurable and justifiable on paper; and
3. Therefore predictable to a certain extent.

Read more: Can You Make Money In Real Estate? Here’s What The Experts Say

Now that you understand a bit better how traditional assets are valued, let’s look at something a little less traditional. 

How Bitcoin Is Valued

David Hunter, CFA, is the Director of Research and Investments for CPC Advisors and Raymond James Financial Services. Naturally, with a title such as his, he’s poured countless hours into researching Bitcoin over the years, understanding its viability, volatility, and overall potential as an investment asset. 

When I asked him how Bitcoin was valued, this was his response (paraphrasing): “¯_(ツ)_/¯”.

He had more to say, but that was the gist of it. 

“Bitcoin is 100% speculation,” he said.

Whereas traditional investments are based on real-world, measurable, and predictable factors like market cap and economic performance, Bitcoin is significantly more “transient.”

Bitcoin’s valuation isn’t affected by earnings reports, P/E ratios, mergers and acquisitions, shifting demographics, confidence in leadership, or government regulation (yet).

Therefore, this is the list of factors driving the value of a single bitcoin: 

• Demand
• Safety
• Regulation

The value of a bitcoin is entirely based upon the availability and interest of future buyers. That’s why wealth advisors aren’t big fans of Bitcoin: supply and demand alone are extremely hard to measure and model after. If you can’t justify the current price of a bitcoin, you can’t predict its future performance. And if you can’t predict future performance, you can’t fit Bitcoin into an asymmetric risk profile. 

That all being said, just because the factors driving Bitcoin’s price upwards are transient and hard to predict, that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. Let’s look at Bitcoin’s insane history and how it exploded in value. 

Why Is One Single Bitcoin Worth So Much?

If we’re talking purely factors driving Bitcoin’s price upwards, it’s demand.

Bitcoin’s mainstream understanding and acceptance, especially by institutional investors and foreign retail traders, are fresh and exciting milestones for sure — but they’re only representative of more demand. New demand from new sources, yes, but garden-variety demand nonetheless. 

According to David, “Bitcoin is like Beanie Babies; the only way you can profit from BTC is by having someone in the future pay more than you paid for your BTC. That’s not true of stock. You’ll get dividends and there’s a basis of value there — shared ownership of a profitable company.” 

Bitcoin hasn’t adopted any stock-like valuation factors since 2011. There’s no truly new factor driving up the price of Bitcoin that wasn’t present 10 years ago — there’s no skilled management team, no new patent, no P/E ratio, no income statements, no balance sheets… just more demand. 

In short, Bitcoin is worth so much because everyone wants a piece of it. 

Bitcoin is valuable for the same reason Paris Hilton is famous: it just… is. 

With Prices Falling, Why Isn’t Bitcoin Dead Yet? 

Sure, Bitcoin fell more than 71% in 2022. But even at around $21,000, it’s still worth more than it was just two years ago in October 2020 — and any time prior to that.

So why is Bitcoin still worth so much?

Moreover, why hasn’t it “died” yet?

Some investors are wondering how Bitcoin has even survived this long. After all, according to 99Bitcoins, there are 1,700 “dead” cryptocurrencies and counting, having totally collapsed for a variety of reasons.

Many of them simply went bust after being exposed as scams:

• OneCoin was outed as a $4 billion Ponzi Scheme, with 98 staff members and traders being prosecuted by the Chinese government.
• Shortly after becoming one of CoinMarketCap’s best performing coins in 2017, BitConnect was outed as a pyramid scheme and now it’s worth nothing.
• The infamous Squid Game crypto was revealed to be a rug pull scam, but not before the creators made off with $3.36 million of investor cash.

But there are also plenty of cryptos that collapsed due to absent leadership or faulty technology:

• SpaceBIT had grand plans to launch “nano-satellites” into orbit and thus attracted plenty of investors, but the leaders shelved the project and abandoned the crypto to die of natural causes.
• Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) was an early Ethereum-based crypto that got hacked for $50 million, leading to a full-scale investor exodus and subsequent early demise.
• Terra Luna (LUNA) recently collapsed on a titanic scale due to widespread short-selling, losing 99.97% of its value overnight and costing unsuspecting investors over $40 billion.

Bitcoin, meanwhile, has:

• No accountable leadership (it’s fully decentralized)
• Tech that’s 12 years old (a fossil in crypto world), and
• Currently accounts for 70% of all crypto-related scams worldwide

Plus, unlike those other deceased cryptos, Bitcoin is uniquely devastating to the environment, drawing ire and condemnation from environmental regulators worldwide.

So, Why is Bitcoin Still Alive?

Well, Bitcoin still exists for the same reason Netflix still sends out DVDs — there’s still a ton of demand.

The demand for the former stems from the belief that Bitcoin — unlike its rivals — will rally back to $69,000 and beyond, making anyone who buys it now rich in the process.

Source: YouTube

Many crypto investors have applied the same buying logic that has proven lucrative in the stock market — that a recession is actually a good time to buy, since assets are basically “on sale” before they inevitably go back up in value.

But the flaw in that logic is simple: we have a century worth of data showing that the stock market recovers after a rough patch. For cryptocurrency, that data doesn’t exist.

So if we don’t have the data to prove — within a reasonable doubt — where Bitcoin is going, what’s our best educated guess?

Where Is the Value of Bitcoin Going?

Now that I’ve covered where Bitcoin has been, where is the value going? Will it rally and shoot for the moon? Or will it crash and burn like a North Korean rocket?

For an objective, expert opinion, I’ll once again lean on David Hunter, CFA. After years of research, here’s what he had to say about Bitcoin’s valuation in 2025 and 2030: 

“¯_(ツ)_/¯”

“Should BTC be $10 or $400,000? That’s a big spread to have no idea what the true market value is.”

Basically, as long as demand exists for Bitcoin, the price will remain high. If demand falters or even evaporates, the price will drop (again). 

That’s why many investors, analysts, wealth advisors, or really anyone who’s built an asymmetric risk portfolio for themselves or for a client is nervous around crypto: it’s based purely on demand, and demand is fickle. 

When you look at factors driving share prices or home values, there’s a lot there that a skilled investor can use to build an asymmetric risk portfolio. In short, there’s plenty of predictability.

For example, it’s a safe bet that the value of a Blue Chip like GOOGL will provide consistent returns over 10 years. Not only has GOOGL consistently grown in value, unlike Bitcoin it has the data to show why it’s grown in value and why it’ll continue to grow in value. 

Similarly, it’s a safe bet that purchasing a condo in an emerging zip code with low taxes will make you money in the short term, whether you choose to rent, flip, or both. 

But despite its overall rise in value, Bitcoin is not a safe bet. 

Demand on its own is not a stable enough factor upon which to build an asymmetric risk portfolio. Without other factors involved, there’s no guarantee or even near guarantee that Bitcoin will keep going up. 

To predict the future value of Bitcoin is to predict its future demand. Looking to later this year and into 2025 and beyond, here are two possible scenarios: 

1. Why Bitcoin Could Survive (and Even Rally)

There are a few promising signs that Bitcoin isn’t ready to throw in the towel just yet:

• Back in March, 2021, Morgan Stanley became the first big U.S. bank to allow its clients to start mixing Bitcoin into their portfolios. This was a big PR win for crypto, as it represented the traditional banking system finally validating crypto as a bonafide, viable growth asset.
• In the early days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Ukrainian government received over $100 million in crypto and NFT donations from anonymous donors worldwide. These donations were reportedly used to purchase mostly medical supplies, signaling how Bitcoin and blockchain tech can be used to save lives and protect democracy.
• Finally, there are some early signs that investors are flocking to Bitcoin as a hedge against record inflation of the USD. This could create a snowball effect, where the perception of Bitcoin as a hedge raises its value, which in turn makes it appear like a more viable hedge.

Bitcoin may have life yet. But even if it manages to get off life support, it still has plenty of hurdles to leap over before ever reaching $69k again.

2. Why It Could Finally Crash for Good

Objectively speaking, there are a ton of outside forces strangulating Bitcoin’s revival, including but not limited to:

• A rising number of countries banning Bitcoin, including the world’s two largest economic superpowers (China and India)
• A lack of further adoption by Wall Street
• Impending intervention by U.S. regulators
• An exponential rise in scams, fraud, tax evasion, and money laundering
• The fact it already consumes over 0.5% of the world’s electricity and has a larger carbon footprint than Argentina
• Its lack of role in the Metaverse
• Its lack of adoption by tech giants, who are all working on their own proprietary Bitcoin-killers

Bitcoin History — Major Milestones that Drove the Price Skyward (and Back Down Again)

Maybe there are clues in Bitcoin’s past that may point to a possible future for the OG crypto. Let’s take a deeper dive into what led to Bitcoin experiencing 80,000,000x growth in a decade — and what brought it back down.

2008-2010: Bitcoin Launches with No Predetermined Value

Did you know that Bitcoin was born on Halloween?

On October 31, 2008, a Japanese cryptographer known only by the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto posted a white paper online titled Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System. 

Soon after, a blockchain was launched to support the first Bitcoin transactions, and on May 22, 2010, the first Bitcoin transaction occurred: 10,000 bitcoins for $25 worth of Papa John’s. 

This warm, cheesy launch gave proof of concept to the idea of Bitcoin: that internet users could safely exchange value without the need for a third party or intermediary, like a bank or PayPal. Therefore, when Bitcoin hit the exchanges in 2010, its value quickly multiplied to a few cents each. 

Bitcoin wasn’t conceived as an investment, but rather as “internet bucks” to ease transactions. Casino chips, if you will. Casino chips don’t rise in value – they merely represent real-world dollars in a more convenient form that’s easier to pass around the poker table. 

But crucially, unlike a casino chip, the value of a single bitcoin was never predetermined. There were no $5, $10, and $20 color-coded bitcoins. Once proof of concept was established and blockchain tech was in place to facilitate transactions, the mysterious Nakamoto was hands-off. Early Bitcoin adopters had to figure out the value of a single bitcoin themselves.  

Therefore, demand alone drove the value of a bitcoin upwards; a trend that would continue into the next decade.

2011-2015: Popularity and “Sonsorships” Drive Demand

By February of 2011, the value of a bitcoin had passed the $1 threshold and continued to climb. Word-of-mouth drew in new buyers, and increased demand artificially drove the price up. 

However, 2011 was also the first time Bitcoin saw a massive plunge. In June it hit $31, only to plummet back to single digits before year’s end. 

Investors speculate that cryptocurrencies suffer massive price drops when big investors sell off their holdings. This not only floods the market, but also reduces buyer confidence, potentially leading to larger selloffs. 

Big selloffs can lower the value of stocks and real estate also, but they’re especially devastating to cryptocurrencies because demand is the only factor propping up their valuations. 

Anyhow, those who held the line were rewarded as the value of Bitcoin reached $1,000 by the end of 2013. The four-figure threshold was a huge win, since it spawned headlines, creating demand out of thin air and inflating the price even higher. 

Further driving demand in the early 2010s was Coinbase. Coinbase wasn’t content merely facilitating trade — they went out of their way to educate and convince big companies like Dell, Expedia, Time, Stripe, and PayPal to begin accepting crypto in some tangible way. 

These corporate “sponsorships” were massively validating to the crypto community, driving demand and price. 

2016-2018: The Bubble Pops

The rising acceptance of Bitcoin led to a “crypto craze” in 2017. New cryptocurrencies were introduced via ICOs or “initial coin offerings,” leading to endless forum debates about which ones would win out and topple Bitcoin. Bitcoin itself became the Jennifer Lawrence of Silicon Valley: the up-and-comer everyone was talking about. 

The craze seemed to reach a head around November 2017, when everyone and their uncle was talking about Bitcoin over turkey and stuffing. 

Unfortunately, by the time everyone bought in, the price of Bitcoin fell down a flight of stairs. Between Turkey Day and Christmas, it had lost 45% of its value and continued declining throughout all of 2018. The stumbling crypto would finally bottom out in January of 2019 at  $3,441, or below 20% of its November 2017 value of nearly $20,000. 

So what led to Bitcoin’s second major bubble pop? If the value of Bitcoin is primarily based on demand, what caused demand to fall? 

Well, rumors that South Korea would ban crypto alone caused the price to plummet 12%. The hacking of Coincheck certainly didn’t help, either: on January 26, Japan’s largest crypto exchange, Coincheck was hacked and lost $530 million USD in customers’ crypto. The Great Crypto Heist is still the biggest theft of all time, and not only did it torpedo Coincheck, but it also reminded new investors that their crypto holdings weren’t FDIC-insured. 

But even before the South Korea rumors and the Coincheck fiasco, Bitcoin had lost nearly half its value by Christmas. Some say it’s because the buying craze of late 2017 caused investors to ask themselves why they were holding crypto, and many came up short. 

“It feels like a bubble,” hedge fund manager Mark Dow told Fast Company in 2018, “[and] the less we understand the object of the bubble, the greater the scope for greed and FOMO to fill in the blanks.”

Dow “simply could not come up with a good reason for the crypto’s insane performance” and therefore chose to short it, doubling his profits. 

Mark Dow certainly shorted at the right time, because there wouldn’t be many opportunities moving forward to bet against Bitcoin. 

2019-2021: To the Moon (and Why)

From mid-2019 until late 2020, the value of a bitcoin fluctuated between $7,000 and $12,000 on a near-daily basis. This would be considered volatile by any other asset’s standard, but by Bitcoin’s standard, it was as steady as a surgeon’s wrist. 

Then, COVID-19 happened. 

Starting in October 2020, just before its 10th birthday, Bitcoin started skyrocketing in price. By December it reached $20k, then $40k in January, until finally peaking at nearly $65k in April. 

What happened, and why hadn’t Bitcoin seen a meteoric rise quite like this before? 

Theories abound, but Cointelegraph has the best overall take:

• Institutional investors were finally onboard. Many companies turned a hail-mary Bitcoin investment into tens of millions almost overnight. Risky or not, those kinds of returns are impossible to ignore. C-Suite executives who supported Bitcoin could no longer be written off as radicals or mere “evangelists” any longer: their beliefs were validated in part by Morgan Stanley, which now allowed its wealthier clients access to Bitcoin in their portfolios.
• It went mainstream. Put simply, Google searches for “Bitcoin” reached an all-time high in 2020, indicating heightened crypto literacy and, logically, increased demand.
• Emerging markets were getting in on the action. According to Cointelegraph, Luno, a crypto exchange for foreign markets, saw purchase volumes triple among retail investors in Nigeria, South Africa, Malaysia, and Indonesia.

2022: A Cold Crypto Winter

After a record run in 2021, the crypto market started falling.

Hard.

By the end of Q1 2022, the cryptocurrency market lost over $1.3 trillion, or 42% of its overall value. Things were even more dire for specifically Bitcoin investors, whose investments have fallen 71% since peaking at $69,000 in November.

Some said it was because Russia spooked investors with talks of a crypto ban. Others blamed El Salvador’s horribly botched Bitcoin adoption.

But in retrospect, it seemed to be a combination of:

• The Fed rising interest rates; and
• A mass selloff from COVID-era retail investors.

In short, Bitcoin was massively popular during the pandemic. And then, it just wasn’t one day.

And the reason why rising interest rates led to a mass selloff of Bitcoin is because, historically speaking, when the Fed raises interest rates it’s to slow down the volume of lending going on. This, in effect, “cools off” the economy.

When the economy cools off, big investors tend to take money out of risky stuff and put it into safe stuff like bonds. In effect, to “wait for this all to blow over.”

So as a result, a lot of Bitcoin started getting sold off very quickly, which in turn spooked pandemic-era buyers into selling, too.

All that was left were the hardcore HODLers who, to their credit, have the best memes:

Source: Reddit, meme by u/easywaytocrypto

Summary

There’s an old joke I read on Reddit once, years back. A young girl asks her dad, a crypto trader, for some money:

“Dad, can I borrow $10?”

“$9.47? What do you need to borrow $10.16 for?”

Since 2010, Bitcoin’s value has skyrocketed mainly because demand has skyrocketed. Originally valued at just $0.0008, the price of a bitcoin has been sucked into an unstoppable vortex: 

Awareness > Demand > Increased Value

Nothing has really changed in the last eight months — the vortex has merely sped up. Secondary factors like emerging markets and Fortune 500 acceptance have played a role, but they always equate to one thing: more demand, and the vortex continues. 

And like a piece of plywood in a twister, the value of Bitcoin could keep rising or it could hit the ground. If nothing else, it’ll be exciting to watch. 

Read more:

• Investing in Bitcoin: Everything You Need to Know Before You Buy
• Top 10 Things You Need to Know About Bitcoin