Dr. Keith Ablow: It is Officially Delusional to Not Buy Bitcoin

Take if from a psychiatrist:  It is delusional not to buy some Bitcoin.  A delusion is a fixed and false belief, and the belief the Bitcoin will “go away” or is “fake” is exactly that—a falsehood maintained only by the ill-informed.  So, fair enough, that isn’t a “delusion,” but I couldn’t resist taking a little poetic license.

Bitcoin is an encrypted set of up to 21 million coins (total, forever) based on software that was anonymously gifted to the world by someone or a group of people who used the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto.  Each Bitcoin can be broken into 100 million tiny fragments (each called a Satoshi).  That means that a transaction between two people could eventually be conducted using 1 Satoshi (one one-hundred millionth of a Bitcoin).

Bitcoin is rapidly being adopted by financial systems around the world as an accepted store of value.  It is legal tender in El Salvador.  It is legal tender in the Central African Republic.  It is legally valid currency to settle financial contracts in Argentina.  And in the United States, much more importantly, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is poised—maybe even today or tomorrow—to let massive financial powerhouses like BlackRock Investment Solutions, Fidelity and Grayscale Investments to sell Bitcoin funds on stock exchanges. 

Bottom line:  Bitcoin is being integrated into the world as digital gold.  This is a world-changing event, and it is happening before our eyes.  Right now.  Bitcoin will end up being held by massive corporations as an asset, held by the world’s wealthiest people as a way to grow their wealth and keep inflation from devaluing their money and being the foundation upon which whole new ways of transacting between people and corporations and countries is built.

You can own one Bitcoin for about $45,000 today.  You can own $1,000 worth of Bitcoin, too.  You just buy it on a website (an exchange) like Coinbase.com. 

There is every reason to think that Bitcoin could be worth $500K or even $1M or more per coin in 2035—about 10 years from now.  That’s ten times increase, or twenty times, or more.  There is less and less reason to believe that it will ever “go away” or turn out to be “some sort of scheme.”  Anyone with money stored away in a bank account or in stocks or in gold should absolutely, positively own some. 

I’m not a financial professional; I’m a psychiatrist.  So I would never suggest you believe me based on my credentials as a financial advisor:  I have none.  As a psychiatrist, though, it’s my opinion that people with available money who don’t buy any Bitcoin at all should have their heads examined. 

Dr. Keith Ablow