Exactly a year ago I bought $100-worth of bitcoin with the sole purpose of seeing the state of my investment a year later and chatting to you about what had led to either the rise (which I assumed was unlikely) or the fall (bingo) of my digital coin.
As you can tell by now, my $100 was probably better put in a savings account offering 0.0001 per cent interest and no account fees (or spent it on 10 Veggie Whoppers from Hungry Jacks). All I have to show 12 months on is a loss of $53.83.
Currently, my $100 investment is worth $46.16. In bitcoin, this is around 0.0016156498387358.
The average closing price for bitcoin (BTC) in September 2021 was $US45,965.46, basing this on the AUD:USD average of the same month, 1 BTC = $62,000. AND, that was when the price was down 7.2 per cent for the month.
Obviously, I couldn’t afford to buy 1 BTC to see how that investment ended up, glad I didn’t, though, as the current price for bitcoin is 1 BTC = $28,564. I’d have lost a cool $33,400 give or take. If the coin keeps bottoming out, I could soon afford one.
Bitcoin, the wildly wasteful, inherently speculative cryptocurrency is, not to be dramatic, dying.
#Bitcoin is dying pic.twitter.com/2N58QjudNO
— Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) September 4, 2022
While other coins are doing a lot better than bitcoin, the point of this exercise wasn’t to make the ‘right’ investment, it was to highlight just how volatile the whole crypto thing is. Until recently, bitcoin was considered a store of value that was somewhat immune to fluctuations in the value of risk assets. That’s no longer the case.
Bitcoin’s market cap now stands at $US358.7 billion, according to CoinMarketCap. Way less than the $US1.3 trillion market valuation it previously held.
Who would have thought that an unregulated coin that is backed by nothing would shrivel up and die?
Moral of the story? There isn’t one, Web3 is going great. I’m going to buy 10 Veggie Whoppers and report back in a year.