People Are Saying Bitcoin Is Dead. I'm Buying It Right Now With $500
Summarize this article with:
By Alex Carchidi – Mar 20, 2026 at 7:30AM ESTKey PointsA lot of investors dislike Bitcoin at the moment. Its falling price during the past 12 months is a big part of the reason for that.Look forward, not back. Every time Bitcoin (BTC +1.16%) takes a hard fall, the obituary writers line up and say their piece. Now is one of those times. The phrase "is Bitcoin going to zero" is trending, the Crypto Fear & Greed Index recently hit an all-time low with an extreme-fear reading of just 5 out of 100, and a growing chorus of investors are declaring the asset finished. Even former U.K.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson got a jab in, calling it a "giant Ponzi scheme" on March 16. The complaints are that Bitcoin's price failed to act like gold during the recent inflation scare, and additionally that the quantum computers of the near future might crack its cryptography and render it worthless overnight. In response to these claims, I'm buying $500 in Bitcoin, and I won't lose even a moment's sleep after I do. Here's why. Image source: Getty Images. These critiques don't prove anything At first blush, the prosecution's case looks pretty damning. Since peaking at about $126,000 in late October 2025, Bitcoin's price is down by more than 40%. Meanwhile, the price of gold has surged past $5,100 per ounce, fueled by central bank buying and the uncertainty surrounding the escalating U.S.-Iran conflict. Even some financial players, like Jefferies, an investment bank, are publicly liquidating some of their long-standing Bitcoin allocation and moving the money into physical gold in response to their concerns surrounding the crypto's exposure to risks from quantum computers. All that certainly stings for anyone who believed Bitcoin was supposed to behave similar to a gold-like safe investment during episodes of economic turmoil or inflation. The fact of the matter is that the market chose gold for that role, even as its price continued to soar and Bitcoin's stumbled. The investment thesis for buying Bitcoin, though, was never primarily about crisis insurance, so much as it was about long-term, scarcity-driven price appreciation. That argument hasn't changed at all. ExpandCRYPTO: BTCBitcoinToday's Change(1.16%) $804.05Current Price$70397.00Key Data PointsMarket Cap$1.4TDay's Range$68934.00 - $71261.0052wk Range$60255.56 - $126079.89Volume42B Only 21 million coins will ever exist. About 20% of all coin are estimated to be permanently lost, and the next halving of the mining reward is coming in 2028. There will never be more coins entering the circulating supply than there are today. So despite widespread fear and market turbulence, the core value driver for the coin is still as strong as ever. Quantum fears are real but premature Now, let's turn to the meatiest criticism, regarding quantum computers "breaking" Bitcoin. The concern is that quantum computers will one day be able to crack cryptography securing Bitcoin wallets, enabling theft. In theory, it's indeed possible. But there aren't yet quantum computers that are powerful enough to actually accomplish the task. There won't be for at least five years, and perhaps not even in 10 or 15 years. One estimate by CoinShares indicates that breaking Bitcoin's cryptography would require quantum computer systems which are roughly 100,000 times more powerful than today's largest quantum machines. Even those machines are presently exclusively the domain of governments, major corporations, and university laboratories. Plus, the coin is already taking early steps to mitigate the quantum threat. Bitcoin's developers are now formally evaluating an early stage proposal called BIP-360, which would update its chain and make a quantum attack a bit harder to pull off. Later updates could mitigate the risk entirely, and there's still plenty of time for those to be envisioned, discussed, developed, tested, and implemented. Therefore, I don't see this as any reason to panic or declare Bitcoin dead. That's why I'm fully comfortable with buying another $500 of it right now. The crowd has declared Bitcoin dead many times now, and yet the "corpse" keeps getting up.Read NextMar 20, 2026 •By Dominic Basulto3 Cryptocurrencies to Buy for a Diversified PortfolioMar 20, 2026 •By Alex CarchidiBitcoin Has Been Declared Dead 471 Times. Here's What Happened Every Time.Mar 19, 2026 •By Alex CarchidiHere's Why Bitcoin Won't Go to ZeroMar 19, 2026 •By Alex CarchidiThis Crypto Insider Is Waiting to Buy Bitcoin – and It Has Nothing to Do With WarMar 18, 2026 •By Eric VolkmanWhy Bitcoin Was Sinking on WednesdayMar 18, 2026 •By Dominic BasultoBetter Buy: Bitcoin or AI?About the AuthorAlex Carchidi is a contributing Motley Fool healthcare and cryptocurrency analyst covering biotech, pharma, cannabis, and digital asset companies. Previously, Alex was a bench scientist and science writer at several biopharma companies and began his career as a researcher at the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT, and Harvard. He holds a bachelor’s degree in biology from Boston University and a master’s degree in business administration with a concentration in finance from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.TMFacarchidiX@alexcarchidiStocks MentionedBitcoinCRYPTO: BTC$70,397.00(+1.16%)+$804.05Jefferies Financial GroupNYSE: JEF$38.21(+0.58%)+$0.22*Average returns of all recommendations since inception. Cost basis and return based on previous market day close.