Price and value are dependent on one another, but it is not necessarily clear how. Most people think of value as the price they see on "stuff" they buy. A huge mistake, a big logical fallacy.
A price of a commodity (1) is the quantity of a certain other commodity (2) (usually called money, see my other article on a definition of money recently) that some individual will accept in return in a trade with a specific quantity of that commodity (1).
The value of that commodity (1) (and 2 for that matter) is some kind of subjective, rational measurement of that specific commodity's usefulness for that particular individual. Some commodities are completely useless to some individuals, and therefore without value (worthless) while being valuable to other individuals. There is no particular reason why a price of a commodity necessarily should match your idea of that commodity's value.
The problem is that most people are highly sheep like and sometimes confirm each others ideas of the value of a certain good and then spikes in prices occur, seemingly sometimes out of the blue ... which are called bubbles.
The point of a bubble though is, that the price will make an equally drastic return to the previous "normal" price on the other side of that bubble. Back to what is often called market "fair value". This is another way of saying that the price is now behaving in the same pattern as the believed average value of the commodity.
There are always two sides in a trade (exchange). Usually we say "a buyer and a seller, but actually they are both a buyer and a seller. The distinction lies in if one think of money as a commodity or not. I do.
But when you buy Bitcoin, what are you buying and what are you selling? As i have not mentioned any particular commodity on the other side of Bitcoin, it could be anything, but usually it is some kind of FIAT money. What you are buying when you buy bitcoin is not that clear. The best way I can describe is:
A network of individually controlled and stable "quantities".
These quantities can only be changed by either transferring to another individual on that network or receiving from them. A digital quantity that cannot be fiddled with is of high value, if it at some point becomes associated with functioning as a superior kind of money. That is the real promise of bitcoin ... and crypto's in general.
So what we are dealing with, regarding the value of Bitcoin is a potential, global flipping of the monetary system from a forced FIAT system to a free market, blockchain based one. If this would happen it would be the greatest wealth transfer in human history be definition and create such incredible averaging out of wealth that we have never even begun to imagine.
The end of the welfare state, the end of war, the end of poverty, the end of ... you name it.
Is this valuable? Not to those who have the power over the monetary system as it stands today. But to the average Joe ??? You bet. Can that value be quantified? Hardly, but it is huge, everything else equal.
If we do a rough calculation of the "fair price" of Bitcoin it would be something like this.
The average global wealth pr. capita is: 25.000 dollars (a round number)
Global capita: 8.000.000.000 (individuals)
Number of fully mined bitcoin: 21.000.000
BTC/Altcoin dominance: 50 % (let's say)
Then the fair price of Bitcoin is:
(50/100) * 25.000 * 8.000.000.000 / 21.000.000 = ca. 2.000.000 Dollars pr. Bitcoin
In my opinion, that is as close as we get to a description of a fair value of Bitcoin :-)
Picture by Geralt:
https://pixabay.com/da/illustrations/euro-transformation-digital-5094279/
List of countries by financial assets per capita:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_financial_assets_per_capita
I was waiting to buy some bitcoin and seems this can be the right moment to do it! What do you think?
Sorry, I do not give financial advise .-)