Since there isn't a central bank that issues bitcoins and that regulates its quantity to try to continuosly stabilize its value, the price of Bitcoin is just based on the demand and supply.
This is why its price is really volatile. For this reason the usual man, greedy for gain, thanks to the diffusion on media of news regarding this argument, sees this coin as an opportunity of a purely speculative investment that can bring enourmous incomes.
Investing in Bitcoin is easier than anyone could think. It's needed just a registration on a crypto exchange that could be, for example, Coinbase or Bitfinex, then a bank transfer on your account, and finally just buy the coin whenever you want based on the price of it.
For these reasons it reached its peak (about 19700$) in December 2017, month in which different media were talking about Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies causing the price to increase exponentially.
Bitcoin peak in December 2017
Short term then, it could be seen as a speculative way of making money, letting everyone think to be just a speculative bubble ready to burst. The situation is really similar to the other crisis in the past: Bitcoin doesn't have a real value in real world.
But, long term, its price is just going to rise.
Here why:
- It doesn't have a real use case in real world yet. But being a rapid, digital and low transaction costs system in the next years it could be accepted as a form of payment by most of companies;
- Every 210000 blocks, the block reward is halved causing the coin to be more "rare";
- Unlike traditional currencies (FIAT), Bitcoin can't cause inflation because there is a limited quantity of coin supply (21000000);
- Its value doesn't reflects just the coin one, it reflects also the technology at the base of it: Blockchain. A technology that for its utility could change the world positively.