Bitcoin’s breathtaking 2024 performance and its rise above $100,000, has captured the world’s attention. Here’s why one card-carrying value investor is bullish on the volatile digital asset.

Chartered Financial Analyst Taesik Yoon was the editor of Forbes Special Situation Survey and Forbes Investor for more than fourteen years. He can be reached at paxorion1985@gmail.com.

After a breathtaking 2024 performance that saw bitcoin soar past $100,000, making many early investors a lot of money, I thought I’d share why I—a self-proclaimed old-school value investor who had avoided hype for more than two decades—kept increasing my exposure to an asset that I believe has no actual intrinsic value. Simply put, my sons believe it does.

My oldest boy first asked me if I owned any bitcoin soon after he began first grade in the COVID-riddled 2020 school year. Even with all of the social distancing protocols in place, he’d heard one of his classmates bragging about how much money his dad made from bitcoin and wanted to know if I owned any too. I told him I didn’t and dismissed it as junk. Despite this, he still wanted to buy some anyway. He was six at the time.

It was then I realized that bitcoin is older than both of my sons. This means it’s been around their entire lives. More importantly, to them, it’s something that’s always had value. And this notion has only gained steam since then. Indeed, every day almost without fail my now ten-year-old checks the price of Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC), which he currently owns ten shares of. He purchased this with the savings he’d accumulated over the years because to him, he’d rather have them than cash. I also believe my increasingly greater ownership of it provided legitimacy in his eyes that bitcoin had real worth ( despite the fact that he was the catalyst for my speculation in the cryptocurrency.)

Right now, it’s my generation and the one before it who probably have the most accumulated wealth of any. I believe this is among the biggest reasons why gold prices surged last year to new all-time highs. We see it as a safe-haven asset that holds its value while also being considered a good hedge against inflation because that’s what it’s been our entire lives. But the only gold my older son knows is what’s around his neck. That gold chain he’s now wearing belonged to his grandpa, purchased roughly 40 years ago for the same reason my boy now owns bitcoin—because to him gold always had value and always would. Sadly, my dad’s no longer with us. And when my generation is all gone, it’ll be our kids who’ll dictate what does and doesn’t have value.

Some will argue that comparing bitcoin to gold isn’t fair since the latter is a physical asset that does have intrinsic value from its use in numerous technology products, including semiconductors, and other industrial applications. But let’s be real here, the latter only amounts to about 7% of the total gold mined. The rest of the gold produced around the world is used to make jewelry or coins and bullion. And I’d argue that the gold used in jewelry, which is about as discretionary a purchase as they come, is not only desirable because it’s pretty, but because of its perceived scarcity. That’s also a big reason why gold is universally accepted as a store of value. More importantly, there has never been a time in my life when gold didn’t have value way above its actual intrinsic worth.

The same is true of my boys and bitcoin. That is to say, we are a product of the times we grew up in. I was raised in a mostly analog world. I’m used to value being associated with something that’s tangible. Music and movies were delivered through physical media like cassette tapes, VHS, CDs and DVDs. Heck, I’m even old enough to remember the 8-Track and Betamax. My boys have no idea what these things are. For them, streaming from the cloud is as natural as renting videos from Blockbuster were to me and my friends. They’re part of a digital generation where everything comes from nothing. Bitcoin doesn’t need a physical presence when those most likely to determine its value in the future doesn’t need it to (or even want it to).

Be Willing To Lose It All

All that said, the crypto market still has many unknowns and carries plenty of risk. More than anything else, the number of cryptocurrencies need to drop by like 99.9%. Going back to the comparison to gold, there are 94 metals on the periodic table of elements. But only three of these are really viewed and accepted as a store of value—gold, silver and platinum. By comparison, there are currently about 270 different cryptocurrencies being traded on the popular crypto trading platform Coinbase and nearly 18,000(!) that it tracks overall.

It’s no coincidence that all my crypto holdings are in bitcoin with a small allocation in ether. To me, these have gained the most legitimacy among the general public and have become entrenched enough in the world view that they will effectively become the