A recent article with some good current pro/con arguments that is worth a full read IMHO because I am only including selective quotes below.
As a proud HODLer of a modest amount of
BTC I currently consider it
primarily as an asset/investment due to its lack of widespread adoption as a form of currency and its high degree of volatility (which I like as a HOLDer!) that makes it challenging when using in 'currency mode' as the author points out. I can also can see it as a commodity like (digital) gold, but I am not sure that 'asset' and 'commodity' are necessarily mutually exclusive anyway. Thoughts?
Some past focused discussions for historical reference I could find (of course many other threads touched on one aspect or another)
Classifying Bitcoin As a Financial Asset August 16, 2015 (small) Bitcoin is an asset or currency. October 17, 2017 (huge!) Is bitcoin an asset or a currency? October 25, 2017 (Large)Is Bitcoin an Asset a Commodity or a Currency? By Matt HusseyAs the price of Bitcoin continues to balloon, we look back at how the cryptocurrency is viewed and whether that definition needs to be re-assessed.
https://decrypt.co/47566/is-bitcoin-an-asset-a-commodity-or-a-currency Bitcoin as a currency?
Bitcoin can be used to buy a whole load of things. From holidays, artwork, food, cars, property and more.
One of Bitcoin’s earliest proofs-of-concept came when Laszlo Hanyecc agreed to pay 10,000 Bitcoin in exchange for two Papa John's pizzas...But the trend appears to be that Bitcoin is moving away from it’s role as a currency. Bitcoin’s trading volume has been declining since 2018
On top of that, the number of Bitcoin addresses holding more than 0.1 coins, (currently about $1,188) is at an all-time high, and the number of addresses holding more than 100 coins (currently $1,188 million) has reached a six-month high, according to Glassnode.
Lastly, but not leastly, for a currency to be viable, it needs to have low volatility. If a currency moves a lot then it makes it difficult to value goods and services appropriately. ..Most major currencies have an annual volatility rate of between 0.5% and 1% every 30-60 days. At the time of writing, it’s down to 2.25% over the last 60 days. But it’s still a long way from the US Dollar in terms of stability.
Bitcoin as an investment?
On the Bitcoin believers side, you have companies like MicroStrategy and Square, who have been betting big on Bitcoin as an investment. Their thinking for Bitcoin’s potential as an asset is two-fold. The first is about its position as a money supply that’s beyond the quantitative easing currently employed by some of the world’s largest economies. The second is in its ability to be an on-ramp for huge swathes of the world not currently reached by financial services.
When currencies go into freefall, governments tend to restrict citizens' access to foreign currency to prevent further devaluation. On top of that, banks see getting involved in banking citizens of these volatile currencies as too risky, keeping them out of those markets. Bitcoin however, has so such issues. Anyone with an internet connection and a USB stick can invest, making it a perfect investment vehicle for a third of the world's population-and as such a great investment to buy into now for when that happens.
The global pot of cash currently sat in pension funds, around $3.6 trillion, wouldn’t invest or speculate on the performance of a currency.
The reason? It’s an asset with zero yield: i.e. the holding of the asset doesn’t produce additional profits beyond the rise and fall of the underlying asset.
Bitcoin as a commodity?
Commodities, as a reminder, are a basic good that is interchangeable with other goods of the same type. In recent years, more financial products have been added to the commodity list, one of which is Bitcoin. Commodities traditionally have higher price volatility than assets like property, or money supplies like currency, making them a fertile environment for speculators trying to predict the rise and fall of an asset and betting accordingly.
Bitcoin as a commodity seems to work on two different investment horizons. Short term, daily volatility, and longer-term speculation. Sidenote: AAX provides bi-weekly Intelligence Reports that analyzes the price of Bitcoin using technical indicators for those keen to jump into day trading.
Long-term, Bitcoin's Stock to Flow model highlights that the cryptocurrency is likely to continue to grow steadily over the longterm.