Four Reasons Why You Should Invest Your Christmas Bonus in Bitcoin
This is the time of year when many people receive year-end holiday bonuses from their employers. Your bonus can be used for many things: paying off loans, buying yourself something fun, giving to charity, fixing the house, or going on a trip. If you are feeling particularly responsible, you could invest that bonus. But what to invest in? The mainstream financial advisors will recommend the same as always: stocks and bonds. Advisors attracted to precious metals might recommend gold or silver in order to protect your investment from the central bank-controlled economy. Here’s another idea: invest your year-end bonus in Bitcoin. Why? Here are four reasons.
Also read: Wall Street Woes not Affecting Bitcoin Investments
1: Bitcoin will let you be an early adopter in a potentially revolutionary technology.
Most investors dream of getting in on the Next Big Thing. “If only I had invested in Microsoft in the late 1980’s, I would be worth millions now!” But finding such a company is like mining a new block with a CPU. For example, in the late 1990’s many investors wanted to find the Microsoft in the Linux world, because they saw the open-source software becoming a dominant force in the future. Although Linux did become dominant, no one Linux company at that time became a Microsoft, so no investment in a Linux company paid off as Microsoft did.
With Bitcoin, you have the chance to invest in the Next Big Thing. But you are not investing in an individual company, whose success depends on strong management, breakthrough research, and a little bit of luck. You are investing in an entire ecosystem that powers thousands of companies. If any of them create the “killer app” that puts Bitcoin in the mainstream, your investment in Bitcoin itself will pay off. It would be like investing in “Linux” in 1998.
2: With Bitcoin, your investment is completely under your control.
Most people who invest in stocks don’t realize that they are not really the “owners” of those stocks – the brokerage company is the owner. The investor is simply the “beneficial owner.” Usually this isn’t a problem, but what happens if the brokerage company goes under? Or is told by the government to freeze your assets? Then you find out very quickly how hard it is to access “your” money.
With Bitcoin, you are the owner of your money. Assuming you use your own wallet (and not a web wallet or exchange), you are in complete control of your funds, and no one can take them away from you. Perhaps the average American doesn’t appreciate the importance of this yet, but the bank customers in Cyprus and the clients at MF Global do.
3: Bitcoin has the potential for explosive growth.
If you invest in a small company today and that company takes off and becomes a dominant global corporation, your investment will surely pay off. As mentioned before, however, the chances are against your picking that one company. But even if you did, your returns would meet a threshold. One company can only get so big (see Microsoft and IBM).
But what if you invested in a currency? One with the potential to become a global currency used by billions? If, for example, Bitcoin were to command a $1 trillion market capitalization, each individual bitcoin would be worth over $47,000. And that would still only be 1/80th of the total global money supply! Like any speculative investment, Bitcoin could go to zero, but the potential upside dwarfs any individual company’s.
4: With Bitcoin’s controlled money supply, you can become “1 in a million.”
One of the key features of Bitcoin is that it has a restricted money supply – there will never be more than 21 million bitcoins in existence. That means that if you own 21 bitcoins today (worth about $9,000 currently), you are “1 in a million!” No matter what the market capitalization of Bitcoin becomes, you will always be the owner of 1 millionth of its total supply.
Having a supply of 21 million bitcoins on a planet of 7.3 billion inhabitants means even 1 bitcoin will represent a great deal of wealth if Bitcoin goes mainstream. The owner of just 1 bitcoin will always be one of the richest Bitcoin owners on earth, for if all bitcoins were equally distributed to the population, there would only be .0028 bitcoins per person. As Bitcoin is the first currency that can be equally used by everyone on earth, the value of 1 bitcoin will greatly rise as its worldwide demand increases.
Perhaps that cool drone quadcopter can wait, after all?
Disclaimer: Investing in Bitcoin is risky – you could lose your entire investment. Be responsible, and invest only what you can afford to lose. In other words, use common sense.
What do you think? Is Bitcoin a good investment for your year-end bonus? Or should you buy that cool drone you’ve been coveting? Let us know in the comments below!
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