My thoughts exactly! I read this same article and had a very different outlook than the author. Even though they are clearly trying to make the argument that Bitcoin's growth is only the result of a bubble based purely on hype (There's an original claim!) it's all in your perspective. You could make two very different assertions looking at this same chart.

A critic who believes cryptocurrency is just a fad or a really elaborate Ponzi scheme would look at this chart and scoff at how little Bitcoin is compared to the amount of attention is has garnered by the media. Looking at the data, you would assume an investment in Apple or Amazon would have paid much bigger dividends by now. But that's comparing Apples to oranges (pun intended :P). Amazon was founded in 1994 and was first publicly traded in 1997 at $16/share. Apple was founded as a company in 1977 and went public in 1980 at $22/share. If you adjust for splits, that puts Amazon at $1.96/share and Apple at $0.39/share. Bitcoin was created in January 2009 and the earliest exchange data I could find on Bitcoin was in Aug 2011 when it was trading at roughly $12/BTC and then due to early volatility in the market it quickly fell to a low of around $2/BTC with an average of $5.10/BTC in the first 30 days.

So, let's say you were incredibly lucky and you were able to invest $2k during the initial offering of Amazon (the largest company to emerge from the .com era) and Apple (currently the most highly valued company on the planet). With your initial investment of $2k in AAPL in 1980 at the split-adjusted price of $0.39/share, you would be able to sell your shares for $746,923.08 USD (5128.205128205128 AAPL at $145.65 USD each).

Your initial $2k investment in AMZN in 1997 at $1.96/share would have netted you an astonishing $1,022,632.66 USD (1020.408163265306 AMZN at $1002.18 USD each) at the time of this writing!

Now, let's say you invested $2k in BTC in 2011 and bought 246.9135802469136 BTC when it was trading at $5.10/BTC on BitStamp. With the current exchange rate of 1 BTC = $2698.23 USD at the time of this writing, your initial investment of $2k would now be worth $666,229.63 USD. Not quite as impressive as what you would be worth had you been able to get in on the ground floor of Apple or Amazon.

However, you have to consider that we are only eight years into BTC being available as a currency. If you consider the amount of time each company has been publicly traded, Amazon has had a 14-year head start over BTC, and Apple is the dinosaur having had a 31-year head start over BTC.

Given all that, I would say Bitcoin has performed hand over fist better than any current tech company on the market.

So, any informed investor could look at this same chart and make the argument that for a digital currency that was only an experiment in digital currency just eight years ago, BTC has performed exceptionally well. Born of a failing economy created and heavily regulated by governments and central banks, what other investment opportunity can you show us that has proven more resilient to stock market fluctuations, weak growth or scandal than cryptocurrency?

I say to the crypto-critics, don't ignore what is consistently proving to be a great investment opportunity and a great chance to be part of a piece of history. As they say, don't put all your eggs in one basket, and don't invest more than you are willing to lose. You shouldn't drain your 401k into cryptocurrency at this point. However, don't pass up on an opportunity like this such that we may not see again in our lifetime.