I'm not sure if Bitcoin is the best investment out there presently
Especially for long term investments since these investments don't need the exponential growth which is not based on real progress or adoption but purely on relentless hype and runaway speculation. Such growth is likely to end up with an implosive collapse one day, which renders the whole idea of long term investments futile and fruitless. On the flip side, though, I agree in general that for short term speculations (let's call a spade a spade here), Bitcoin is one of the top-notch ("state of the art", as it were) tools freely available to everyone with a fiver in his pocket
If you're not sure if Bitcoin is the best investment out there, then what are the other things that according to you are close competitors in terms of investment options? I seriously can't mention even one thing that comes close to what growth Bitcoin has gone through since its existence. Another thing -- what time frame do you consider to be short term, and what long term?
Honestly, I don't know about any asset which could be safely considered as a long term investment
Apart from investments in your own business, of course, but this is certainly not what you wanted to hear. Nevertheless, if you still want to hear my opinion in respect to purely financial investments (which seems to be your point), I think that the US dollar as well as the US treasuries, especially so called TIPS (Treasury inflation-protected securities) are the best match if we are talking about terms over one year (and considerably longer terms), and still more so if you live on some other currency ("bad" money). That would cut as a long term for me. Regarding Bitcoin, more specifically, it is a short term investment, anyway (if it can be called that at all). In other words, you buy, ride the wave and sell, then wash, rinse, repeat. But this is pure speculation, not investment, strictly speaking, and each cycle may take from days to weeks, or months, at most. But you know that as good as myself