Terrible article. Everyone knows buying/selling bitcoins is nothing like investing in stock. It's more akin to investing in gold or another commodity like a foreign currency. Everyone also knows it's 99x less stable. It's easy to manipulate the market. Theft is rampant. Everyone knows these things. But to say you can't invest in bitcoin is silly. Bitcoin is considered property, or at least the government had plans to consider it so. It's as much property as buying a computer application is. Which take that as you will. It's hard to classify bitcoin because it's such a unique thing. If nothing else it's akin to currency. I don't condone dropping your life savings on bitcoin but it's a hobby for a lot of people. It's also made quite a few people very rich.in·vest
inˈvest/Submit
verb
gerund or present participle: investing
1.
expend money with the expectation of achieving a profit or material result by putting it into financial schemes, shares, or property, or by using it to develop a commercial venture.
Agreed. It comes down to semantics. What is exactly the difference between speculation and investing? Is is possible to "invest" in something that is purely speculative by nature? "Speculation" Definition #5 from dictionary.com:
5. engagement in business transactions involving considerable risk but offering the chance of large gains, especially trading in commodities, stocks, etc., in the hope of profit from changes in the market price.
Seems also to be a matter of circumstance. A person investing all of their assets into solely gold or solely bitcoin seems to be speculating to some degree. The dude with the bitcoin is more likely to lose his shirt, but may very we'll come out ahead, if bitcoin doesn't tank. Maybe placing a small percentage of assets in bitcoin could be considered an investment?
Probably more so than the roulette table. This article is weird. The author seems to miss the point that bitcoin isn't simply a digital currency without any other characteristics. The digital currency BTC is a facet of the bitcoin network. Buying BTC is more like investing in the Euro. A Euro will always be a Euro, but the number of Big Macs that a Euro can buy might increase if the Eurozone is doing well and there is an increase in the demand for Euro's.