If bitcoin according to Satoshi is digital money then why call it investment.

[Kakmakr]

Bitcoin can only be money (currency) or legal tender, if a government approve it. "Currency is a medium of exchange for goods and services. In short, it's money, in the form of paper and coins, usually issued by a government and generally accepted at its face value as a method of payment." - Source : https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/currency.asp

So, most governments does not accept Bitcoin as a currency, but rather define it as a commodity. (Mostly to protect their monopoly over the manipulation of their own local currency)

[davis196]

Perhaps Satoshi never thought that Bitcoin would turn into a financial asset. He thought that BTC will have a somewhat stable and low price (low volatility)and it will be used as a digital currency. I guess that he was wrong about this. He was also partially wrong about Bitcoin being a 100% "peer-to-peer" system, because of all the third party centralized crypto projects, like exchanges, wallets, casinos, etc.
I know that Bitcoin in itself is truly p2p, but the entire crypto industry definitely isn't 100% peer-to-peer.
Maybe this will change and all centralized crypto projects will fade away.
Bitcoin became an investment because of it's fixed supply and growing demand, not because some whales did market manipulation back in the day.

[Sim_card]

store of value aka digital gold

OP, why did you call bitcoin gold. Gold is an asset likewise bitcoin. Initially Satoshi created bitcoin as a digitital currency and an alternative to fiat using P2P for transactions. As time goes in bitcoin begin to gain recognition and that helped to increase the value of bitcoin because it is limited in supply. Another great event that has helped bitcoin value to increase is bitcoin halving. As the day passes on bitcoin started gaining more value and the depreciation of fiat currency made bitcoin to be seen as an investment and also used as a store of value because if you hold bitcoin for long and sell during the bull run,your bitcoin will yield you profit. Bitcoin is now a commodity because the price is being affected by demand and supply.

[OgNasty]

Originally it wasn’t viewed as an investment by most people. I felt alone back in the day using terms like market cap. It was originally a PayPal replacement with no fees. Things have changed a bit and now it’s being pushed as a replacement for gold. It’s scarcity in the end proved to be too valuable to investors for its original mission to succeed.

[franky1]

Originally it wasn’t viewed as an investment by most people. I felt alone back in the day using terms like market cap. It was originally a PayPal replacement with no fees. Things have changed a bit and now it’s being pushed as a replacement for gold. It’s scarcity in the end proved to be too valuable to investors for its original mission to succeed.

scarcity is not the value proposition.. if there is 10 people at a party but you can cut the cake into 21 pieces. its not a scarce cake.
however if the cake cost $500 to make then each slice is worth $50 thus people tend to respect the taste of the cake more

bitcoin is no different. if its costing a minimum of $20k to make a fresh btc. meaning no one on planet can get it for less right now. then everyone respects that and then speculate on its taste(desire) above that.

there is a good reason why bitcoin leaped in 2013 when asics first ramped up mining cost. yes it speculated by 100x and then corrected to 10x. but the leap had reason
then with the halvings and everyone evaluated their cost per creation at year end. that speculated the next bull/hype a year after halvings.

the underlying cost of creation of anything has power over the end value proposition/speculation above that base cost. its simple economics

in short
its more about the mining cost supporting/underlying new raised bottoms, which markets then speculate above. rather than pure 'scarcity'

[TheUltraElite]

The simple explanation to this is that people trade on Bitcoin vs fiat and thus the price changes due to demand and supply. This is a secondary effect to being a currency and similar markets were already existing with foreign currencies. Because the speculation of prices occurs hence the price changes. This leads to the trading market and a long term holding market. Therefore it has become an investment and a store of value.

Additionally since the currency is deflationary, the store of value concept become attractive to investors.

[kryptqnick]

Bitcoin wasn't envisioned as a form of investment, but it because an investment because of how drastically the price started changing and because it's consistently going up over the years. When the value of something increases over time, it's natural that people will treat it as an investment.
The idea of Bitcoin as electronic cash is still somewhat relevant, and there are people who use it this way. But there isn't enough adoption of Bitcoin as a form of payment, and then there's the scalability issue.
It should also be noted that even fiat is sometimes used as an investment. For example, it used to be very popular in my country to buy the USD, hodl and then sell for local fiat because our fiat suffered a lot more from inflation than the USD, so the USD was mainly seen as an investment. But it is also a type of money, there's no doubt about it. Bitcoin can easily be both, and it doesn't matter whether this is what Satoshi thought Bitcoin would become.

[Outhue]

You can only get the right definition depending on what you are using your Bitcoin for, if you by to make more profit, it's a store of value in your case, if you buy to spend on other things and items it becomes internet money or digital money, you can even call it a scam currency if you bought at the top and it goes way down (Bad Timing), that's your fault though.

As you can see, Bitcoin is anything you can it, this world still have it's freedom of speech right? Bitcoin is fit to be called a digital gold, it created value that's why the name fits, I don't know why some people are even arguing about this topic.

As a Bitcoin adopter, why are you buying? What are you using your Bitcoin for? If you know the answer then..........

[Wapinter]

I know you must be wondering what's up with my topic right? I too was having a thought over this and I  felt I should bring it here for discussion so we all can share our own various opinions.

For quite sometime now all I have been seeing is statements and topics of bitcoin being an investment and it bothered me to look into it and I as well stand to be corrected logically and with facts with respect to this conversation.

The sole reason why bitcoin was invented was to serve the purpose of digital money for which it was clearly stated on the white paper by Satoshi Nakamoto as captured below by quote;

Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System.

    Bitcoin White Paper
If you look at the top page of the while paper, it is clearly written there and there was no captions like investment  attached to it or being mentioned by Satoshi Nakamoto himself. Now I ask how come it deviated to being an investment?. I have read all through the white paper and never saw anything like investment but rather " an electronic peer 2 peer cash payment system" which means bitcoin is money but in a digital way of making payments. So how come it became an investment?

I believe in the course of adding more value to it's existence, whales bought large volume by market manipulation at the early stage of bitcoin inception and those who couldn't stand the market wave sold out giving way for the whales to take over the market and since then along with other occurrence and scenarios,  bitcoin became an investment and store of value aka digital gold as per say as it worked out for the whales according to their schemes. Would it be that easy to correct that notion of bitcoin being called an investment other than money.
When it is used for payment of goods and services on daily basis and we having full custody of our funds in a digital way would it be necessary we calling it an investment aside the price increase which is fluctuating and barely stable for a long time.? I believe Satoshi Nakamoto the sole originator of the bitcoin knows much better than everyone why he invented the bitcoin and I also would be looking forward to his reappearance be it pseudo anonymous or otherwise to making some notable observations on the bitcoin journey so far.

Anything that grows in value over a period of time is investment. Don't people invest in forex and trade it to make profit?
Bitcoin is a medium to tranfer value. You can not use bitcoin directly to buy all things in many places but through bitcoin you can transfer value throughout world in a blink of an eye.

Bitcoin is investment because it's value goes up and down with it demand and supply matrix

[Z390]

You already have the answer Op, you are not thinking is all, Bitcoin can be use to pay for expenses online, I have use bitcoin to pay bills too thanks to few online market place that accept Bitcoin as means of payment, this makes Bitcoin a digital money.

It's also a good store of value because it goes higher than what it is today, demand and supply is running it Bitcoin's blood, this makes it a digital gold, which automatically means a good investment opportunity.

I don't understand how you get lost with these because Bitcoin is the most simplest one to understand. 

[CryptSafe]

Bitcoin wasn't envisioned as a form of investment, but it because an investment because of how drastically the price started changing and because it's consistently going up over the years. When the value of something increases over time, it's natural that people will treat it as an investment.
The idea of Bitcoin as electronic cash is still somewhat relevant, and there are people who use it this way. But there isn't enough adoption of Bitcoin as a form of payment, and then there's the scalability issue.
It should also be noted that even fiat is sometimes used as an investment. For example, it used to be very popular in my country to buy the USD, hodl and then sell for local fiat because our fiat suffered a lot more from inflation than the USD, so the USD was mainly seen as an investment. But it is also a type of money, there's no doubt about it. Bitcoin can easily be both, and it doesn't matter whether this is what Satoshi thought Bitcoin would become.

I understand the fact that investment is one thing everyone would want to venture once they see the opportunity and I believe that was the situation of bitcoin then. As the price began to appreciate, whales seized the opportunity to accumulate more of it withholding it in supply, making it scarce commodity while the price grows very fast.

Adoption I think is one of the major challenges facing bitcoin currently as most government frowns at it and they see it as a big threat to their fiat and other activities they do which some are quite shaddy. Although some have adopted bitcoin as a legal tender digitally and it is working very good for them. It is good that there has been a gradual individual adoption of bitcoin into various businesses which solely represents the bitcoin for goods and services goal and that would tell in time to come.

[Wiwo]

Even though Satoshi stated that Bitcoin is a p2p electronic cash it doesn't elude Bitcoin's other side features such as volatility and limited supply which have madeBitcoin'sn value increase insistently, this made it become more of an asset since one can simply hold Bitcoin and benefit from it value volatilities either ups or down.

More also, bitcoin has not attained the global adoption, and it could be easily used as a currency because not many merchants or businesses are accepting Bitcoin as a form of payment for goods or services.

[crwth]

I think it's safe say that when you are creating or inventing something and a lot of people are trying it out and exploring it with their own, they would find ways to use it in a couple of different ways even if it's not meant to be for that or something.

A lot of people probably went out and bought Bitcoin for the sake of earning more so that's definitely going to be their goal. It's about money. So that's why I think they are considering it as an investment.

[Dunamisx]

The sole reason why bitcoin was invented was to serve the purpose of digital money for which it was clearly stated on the white paper by Satoshi Nakamoto as captured below by quote;

Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System.

    Bitcoin White Paper

There's nothing changing about what you've read on the white paper from what is happening now, but have you also considered that bitcoin being a digital currency is also volatile and this volatility is what make it profitable for someone like me and you to use the currency as an investment whereby we can choose to hodl it over time and make some interest on it, yet it's values never decreases with time, you can spend it as a monetary value, hodl your asset with it or turn an investment asset with your bitcoin you have, this is a good reason for us to make use of bitcoin over fiat because bitcoin has multi application of use being an investment asset and digital currency.

[passwordnow]

It's the same as gold which has been a medium of transfer and exchange. But overtime it has upgraded and become a store of value just as Bitcoin. Time changes and if people see the worth from within, we're all considering that and that's what the majority of Bitcoin people have seen with it. It's not just a medium of transfer or a digital money but it has became a wealth, a store of value, an investment and there's nothing wrong with that because Bitcoin remains as is 'til now based on the whitepaper.

[Venik]

Because a lot of things changed and the creation outlived the creator. Bitcoin still can be digital money, but it also can be an asset. It depends on what you want to do with it.

[Mate2237]

  CryptSafe my Nigga, you have been a while in the forum and there are some terms we learn to know their uses base on the way they are used in the context both in physical classroom too, not all the words the teacher pronounced are known to us instant but some we know from the context the teacher used. First of all I want to thank you for understanding the part that bitcoin is a digital currency. Now if it is a currency, have you heard the term "loan" with Fiat Currency? Yes. Now how does loan work. Loaning someone doesn't mean you are buying something but you give money to someone with a specific amount and the person will pay you back with interest. That is an investment, isn't it? That is you gave out money to get profit from the money you gave out. There is a saying in Nigeria, "We use money to find money", that is we used money to get more money from the capital.

Now when we come to bitcoin, yes bitcoin is money for digital use only and bitcoin appreciate so people buy bitcoin when the price is low and sell it out when the price increase and that is the investment part of bitcoin. So don't be confused with it, it is the buying and selling of bitcoin is the investment. Like now, if you buy bitcoin today as it is $30k and keep it for about 3 to 4 years and bitcoin price increase to $60k how much do you think you will make? That will be a big amount of money though that will also depends on the amount you used for the investment. Bitcoin is just like the loan business that appreciate time.

[Nwada001]

Bitcoin still can be digital money, but it also can be an asset. It depends on what you want to do with it.

That's just the simple truth: everything Bitcoin is being used as to us depends on the holder. You can either decide to make it a means of payment (money), calling it money, or a store of value (calling it assets). Satoshi has an aim for which the goal has already been accomplished, and more is being discovered from what the main purpose was initially intended for. To me, it might not be mentioned on the white paper, but I believe it was built to serve an investment purpose from the beginning. Anything that has the ability to increase in value could be considered an investment, and Bitcoin is not an exception.

[yhiaali3]

Bitcoin is a revolution, and as it happens in all revolutions, it often deviates from its correct path, either as a result of internal factors or by external factors.

I think that here Bitcoin has been diverted from the goal for which it was deliberately created by governments and whales. Governments could not control Bitcoin because it is decentralized and whales are happy to manipulate the market and win billions of dollars through fear and greed.

There are few believers in Bitcoin as it is (a peer-to-peer payment method) and they can do nothing unless the community as a whole is made aware of the truth.

[Cryptomultiplier]

Well, I don't think there is any hard thought to this. Infact, what should be noted is the fact that it is firstly decentralized and it is meant to be anonymous too.

This is one reason why being a digital money/currency that BTC is, and not knowing how much value it would be worth sometime later is a thrill for some. There is always a hope of making gains if BTC is saved up or HODL, over a period of time compared to your local fait or CBDC or digital money, the BTC idea rhymes well with what social media looks like and what it offers to its long term users, and it makes us believe in a digital future where most online transactions is done remotely from anywhere in the world.
BTC is also one among other crypto currency, as we have seen many crypto currencies make huge profits during volatile periods, and unlike the way stocks and the forex trading could make loss or gain, so does BTC.

The DCA strategy of investment or purchasing BTC is one popular strategy of investment that mere digital money functions only, won't provide. DCAing is a regular input of a certain percentage of funds, to acquire BTC over a time, after which it can be sold, gains collected and capital reinvested.
The bigger the funds put in, the greater the gains I believe.