Bitcoin has grown from idea (2008), to working system (2009), to its first real-world use at <$0.01 per coin (2010), to a global currency valued at $30K+ per coin and $600B+ in aggregate (January 2020).
Although Bitcoin is empirically one of the best investments of the past decade, it still remains controversial. Is it a new form of money? A speculative bubble? Or a bit of both?
Investors have well-established frameworks for evaluating assets like equities, credit, and real estate. But a new monetary asset such as Bitcoin appears so infrequently that no clear framework exists.
This paper outlines a simple and intuitive framework for Bitcoin as a new monetary asset.