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For some investors, seeing Bitcoin (BTC) priced in the six-figure Canadian dollar range can make it feel out of reach. This often leads to the question: “Am I too late?” That feeling comes from unit bias, which is the habit of thinking in whole coins instead of fractions. Judging by whole-coin price alone can make Bitcoin and other large capitalization tokens look harder to access than they actually are.
The sticker shock of Bitcoin’s market price can be misleading. Like a Canadian dollar that breaks into 100 cents, each Bitcoin divides into 100 million satoshis so you do not need to buy a whole coin. Holding a fraction such as 0.1 BTC or 0.01 BTC is enough to participate in the blockchain’s network, and before spending anything you can start by learning how it all works.
Looking only at price per coin can create the impression that Bitcoin is “expensive” compared to tokens that trade for a few dollars or cents. In reality, price alone may not reflect an asset’s value.
At a Bitcoin price of $150,000 CAD, $500 would translate to about 0.0033 BTC, or 333,000 satoshis. The ability to buy fractions allows people to participate in the network without purchasing an entire coin.
It’s easy to think even other large capitalization networks like Ethereum (ETH) look cheaper than Bitcoin because the price per coin is lower. This might lead some to see it as the less expensive option. In reality, the two networks are built differently. Bitcoin’s supply is capped, while Ethereum’s is not. That difference is just one of many when comparing the two networks. We recently explored four others in our article on 5 key differences between Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Factors that many investors weigh when considering digital assets include:
Looking at these factors can provide context and useful variables to consider surrounding digital asset market fluctuations. Still, they should not be read together as predictions. Even with clear supply rules or strong networks, crypto assets remain volatile and outcomes are uncertain.
When comparing assets, another metric worth considering is fully diluted value (FDV). FDV takes the current token price and multiplies it by the maximum supply, showing what the market capitalization would be if every coin were already issued. This discrepancy is critical for investors to understand, as it highlights the potential for dilution as more tokens enter circulation.
For Bitcoin, FDV is very close to its market cap, since nearly all of its 21 million coins are circulating. Many newer tokens, however, have only a small portion of their total supply in circulation today. With large amounts of supply still to be released, they can appear “cheaper” on a per-coin basis.
One feature that many view as distinguishing Bitcoin from other digital assets is its design, which enforces scarcity. New coins are released on a set schedule, transactions become permanent once confirmed on the blockchain, and thousands of independent nodes check the rules. Together, Bitcoin proponents argue that these features make it extremely difficult to change Bitcoin’s supply or rewrite its history.
The security of this ledger comes from proof-of-work mining. Analysts often point to its high energy use, but this cost is what makes it computationally expensive to rewrite history and helps protect the network from fraud.
Aspects like unit bias, supply rules, and volatility remind us that digital assets are complex systems. Price is only one piece of a much larger picture, and volatility has become a defining feature of crypto assets. If the value of a single coin looks high, it misses the point that these assets are divisible and influenced by more than headline numbers. Price is the headline. Knowledge is the substance.
To keep updated rather than influenced, explore more of our research and education on the Newton blog.
