Investing in bitcoin is like investing in the internet in the 90s

The cryptocurrency market has exploded this year with over 1,000 digital currencies now on the market.

The price of bitcoin, the first and largest cryptocurrency, has captured the most attention, with Wall Street CEOs from JPMorgan's Jamie Dimon to Goldman Sachs' Lloyd Blankfein weighing in on the coin this month alone.

It's up over 450% this year at near $4,400 per coin.

Matthew Goetz, a former Goldman Sachs vice president and cofounder of BlockTower Capital, a Connecticut-based crypto hedge fund, recently told Business Insider that bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are technologies like any other, and as a result, are susceptible to being usurped by a digital currency with superior tech.

"Bitcoin is the most entrenched, it has very stable protocol, it doesn't change a lot, and it has a very strong developer base, but at the end of the day it is still software," Goetz said. "There is some chance that something an order of magnitude better than bitcoin, technologically, could come along."

Kind of like how Facebook replaced MySpace as the go-to social media site.

But it's still early days. Goetz says if you liken cryptocurrencies to the internet, then we are still in 1992. Just like bets during the early days of the internet were risky, so too are bets in the crypto market today.

"You could be right on the thesis that cryptocurrencies are transformative and you could make what you think is the right bet at the time, but remember one time you had Yahoo and then this thing called Google came along," he concluded.

Sourse: BI

Read more:

• Bitcoin is changing hands for $24,000 in Iran, based on the “Official” exchange rate
• Tendayi Kapfidze: “bitcoin is a pyramid scheme
• Want to Invest in Crypto? Think About Buying Stocks
• According to this rumor: A single Bitcoin whale was responsible for the astronomical price hike in 2017
• Libra faces strong opposition and China embarks on a race to launch its own global cryptocurrency