Will Bitcoin Ever Be a Serious Alternative to Gold and Stocks?

Cryptocurrency markets are on the move again: Category giant bitcoin has seen its tokens gain 40% in value in 2020 alone, and 155% over the last 52 weeks. If bitcoin was a stock, the “company” would be worth roughly $185 billion today. That market cap would land it right between aerospace titan Boeing and software giant Adobe as one of the 40 most valuable companies on the U.S. stock market.

Bitcoin’s founders and supporters see it as “a new kind of money.” As such, market watchers on both the bull and bear sides of the cryptocurrency debate often argue that the tokens — currently trading in the neighborhood of $9,700 each — will either skyrocket in value to at least $1 million, or bitcoin will collapse and die. There is no middle ground.

If bitcoin achieves a large enough scale and a wide enough…