5 Reasons You Need at Least 1 Bitcoin
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Not every investor wants to deal with that level of uncertainty, but you can't question the results if you compare it to popular benchmarks like the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite. The cryptocurrency also recently reclaimed $100,000 per coin and may head higher.
If you are on the fence with Bitcoin, these are some of the reasons to consider getting started.
Although Bitcoin doesn't produce revenue and net income growth like publicly-traded corporations, the returns are unquestionable. Bitcoin has risen by 68% over the past year and has soared by 978% over the past five years.
The S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite haven't even doubled over the past five years. Bitcoin has proven to be a viable way to multiply your money. While results are not guaranteed, many investors use long-term returns to assess momentum and investors' appetite for an asset. Bitcoin has hit the mark for a long time despite the narrative around uncertainty.
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Last year was a big one for Bitcoin. Spot Bitcoin ETFs began trading on Jan. 11, 2024, and many financial institutions rushed to offer their own. BlackRock, Fidelity, ARK Invest, VanEck, and Grayscale are some of the firms that launched Bitcoin ETFs.
Each of those ETFs puts more money into Bitcoin, and that leads to upward pressure on the price. Bitcoin ETFs have made the digital currency more accessible for everyday investors, and this trend can catapult Bitcoin higher in the long run.
President Donald Trump established the Bitcoin Strategic Reserve with an executive order. This strategic reserve can boost the demand for crypto and lead to more gains for investors.
While the Bitcoin Strategy Reserve is relatively old news, it can ripple into individual states. For instance, Arizona recently became the second U.S. state to create a Bitcoin Strategic Reserve. It's possible for more states to follow the trend, and each commitment requires more Bitcoin purchases.
Bitcoin also serves as a valuable inflation hedge that gives it more value as central banks print more money. There are only 21 million Bitcoins available, and it is impossible for anyone to increase the supply. That's the beauty of Bitcoin's decentralized blockchain.
Investors who want a historically successful asset that can minimize inflation risk may want to take a closer look at this alternative asset.
Universal currencies give people more control and allow them to avoid foreign exchange fees. If an American goes to the United Kingdom, they have to pay fees to convert their U.S. dollars into British pounds. Then, if you travel to any country in the European Union, you have to convert some of your U.S. dollars or remaining British pounds into euros.
It's a cumbersome and expensive process for regular travelers who make frequent purchases. Some credit cards also have foreign transaction fees that hike costs for paperless transactions.
Bitcoin avoids those fees when it is used for purchases. The long-term premise of the cryptocurrency is attractive for people who want to save money on foreign exchange fees. Right now, Bitcoin is still in its early innings compared to fiat currencies. At some point, Bitcoin's annualized growth rate will slow down. However, Bitcoin's nature as a universal currency should boost its appeal in the years ahead.
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Bitcoinist, 'Arizona Passes Bitcoin Reserve Bill, Becomes Second US State.'
This article originally appeared on GOBankingRates.com: 5 Reasons You Need at Least 1 Bitcoin
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Being forced to write out essays in longhand could make college feel even more old-fashioned than it did before, and less connected to contemporary life. Other professors believe that moral appeals may still have teeth. Annabel Rothschild, an assistant professor of computer science at Bard College, said she's found that blanket rules and prohibitions have been less effective than a personal address and appeal to social responsibility. Rothschild is particularly concerned about the environmental harms of AI, and she reports that students have responded to discussions about those risks. The fact that she's a scientist who understands the technology gives her message greater credibility. It also helps that she teaches at a small college with a focus on the arts. Today's seniors entered college at the tail end of the coronavirus pandemic, a crisis that once seemed likely to produce its own transformation of higher ed. The sudden switch to Zoom classes in 2020 revealed, over time, just how outmoded the standard lecture had become; it also showed that, if forced by circumstance, colleges could turn on a dime. But COVID led to little lasting change in the college classroom. Some of the students I spoke with said the response to AI has been meager too. They wondered why faculty weren't doing more to adjust teaching practices to match the fundamental changes wrought by new technologies—and potentially improve the learning experience in the process. Lieber said that he wants to learn to make arguments and communicate complex ideas, as he does in his film minor. But he also wonders why more courses can't assess those skills through classroom discussion (which is hard to fake) instead of written essays or research papers (which may be completed with AI). 'People go to a discussion-based class, and 80 percent of the class doesn't participate in discussion,' he said. The truth is that many professors would like to make this change but simply can't. A lot of us might want to judge students on the merits of their participation in class, but we've been discouraged from doing so out of fear that such evaluations will be deemed arbitrary and inequitable —and that students and their parents might complain. When professors take class participation into account, they do so carefully: Students tend to be graded on whether they show up or on the number of times they speak in class, rather than the quality of what they say. Erin McGlothlin, the vice dean of undergraduate affairs in WashU's College of Arts & Sciences, told me this stems from the belief that grading rubrics should be crystal clear in spelling out how class discussion is evaluated. For professors, this approach avoids the risk of any conflicts related to accommodating students' mental health or politics, or to bureaucratic matters. But it also makes the modern classroom more vulnerable to the incursion of AI. If what a student says in person can't be assessed rigorously, then what they type on their computer—perhaps with automated help—will matter all the more. Like the other members of his class, Lieber did experience a bit of college life before ChatGPT appeared. Even then, he said, at the very start of his freshman year, he felt alienated from some of his introductory classes. 'I would think to myself, What the hell am I doing, sitting watching this professor give the same lecture that he has given every year for the last 30 years? ' But he knew the answer even then: He was there to subsidize that professor's research. At America's research universities, teaching is a secondary job activity, at times neglected by faculty who want to devote as much time as possible to writing grants, running labs, and publishing academic papers. The classroom experience was suffering even before AI came onto the scene. Now professors face their own temptations from AI, which can enable them to get more work done, and faster, just as it does for students. I've heard from colleagues who admit to using AI-generated recommendation letters and course syllabi. Others clearly use AI to write up their research. And still more are eager to discuss the wholesome-seeming ways they have been putting the technology to use—by simulating interactions with historical authors, for example, or launching minors in applied AI. But students seem to want a deeper sort of classroom innovation. They're not looking for gimmicks—such as courses that use AI only to make boring topics seem more current. Students like Lieber, who sees his college education as a means of setting himself up for his career, are demanding something more. Instead of being required to take tests and write in-class essays, they want to do more project-based learning—with assignments that 'emulate the real world,' as Lieber put it. But designing courses of this kind, which resist AI shortcuts, would require professors to undertake new and time-consuming labor themselves. That assignment comes at the worst possible time. Universities have been under systematic attack since President Donald Trump took office in January. Funding for research has been cut, canceled, disrupted, or stymied for months. Labs have laid off workers. Degree programs have cut doctoral admissions. Multi-center research projects have been put on hold. The ' college experience ' that Americans have pursued for generations may soon be over. The existence of these stressors puts higher ed at greater risk from AI. Now professors find themselves with even more demands than they anticipated and fewer ways to get them done. The best, and perhaps the only, way out of AI's college takeover would be to embark on a redesign of classroom practice. But with so many other things to worry about, who has the time? In this way, professors face the same challenge as their students in the year ahead: A college education will be what they
