Where to invest: Bitcoin or Canadian Tire money?

The cryptocurrency known as Bitcoin is making headlines everywhere these days, its fast growth and mysterious nature catching the eye—and wallet—of investors. But where does Bitcoin stand alongside its competitors in the market? To help gain some perspective, we used three criteria to compare it with another non-standard currency, Canadian Tire money.

1. VALUE:

At the time of this writing, Bitcoin's value stands at $22,126.95 Canadian. Despite the currency's extreme volatility, this can only be described as high to extremely high.

Canadian Tire money, on the other hand, comes in denominations of 5¢, 10¢, 25¢, 50¢, $1, and $2. Even if you were able to get your hands on a lot of $2 bills (and sometimes they don't have them), it would take approximately 11,063 of them to equal one Bitcoin.

That said, I have no idea how to use Bitcoin. Do you? What are they? What do you do with them? Is there a machine? Are they the machines? Are they worth anything at all to you if you can't use them? It would seem they are not.

VERDICT: Canadian Tire money

2. GROWTH POTENTIAL:

Even the most bullish investor would agree that there is little-to-no growth potential in Canadian Tire money as a portfolio-bearing fund. It is likely to stick around through the long-term assuming the store continues to perform well, which is a likely outcome. However, the store's paper cryptocurrency bearing a friendly mustachioed man is likely to remain near or at its present value, enabling you to get a free pair of gloves, or perhaps 2% off a good lawnmower. Stable, but certainly not transcendent.

How do things look for Bitcoin, vis-a-vis growth potential? Let me answer that this way:

My nephew says he has an invisible purple dinosaur. When I ask him how big it is, he says "A hundred thousand feet." In a world with no natural predators, perhaps this dinosaur, within a year's time, will have grown to five hundred thousand feet. Perhaps one million feet. But do its exact height and rate of expansion matter, since it doesn't exist and never did and also you don't know how to spend the dinosaur anywhere or even buy it?

They do not.

VERDICT: Canadian Tire money

3. DO PEOPLE EVEN KNOW WHAT IT IS AT ALL:

Certainly you know what Canadian Tire money is. You've come across it dozens, perhaps hundreds of times in your life, whether shopping at the store or shoving it in the glove compartment or cupholder of your uncle's car.

Bitcoin, on the other hand, is most frequently referred to in terms resembling the following: "So Bitcoin, you know that Bitcoin thing that everybody is talking about? It's called Bitcoin, right, that's the word? Anyway what is that, is it anything?"

"I don't know."

VERDICT: Canadian Tire money

FINAL VERDICT: Well, it's sure not Bitcoin.

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