Should You Invest in Bitcoin? Here's What Suze Orman Thinks

This financial guru is a Bitcoin fan, but she has some caveats.

Popular financial advisor and podcast host, Suze Orman, is a fan of Bitcoin (BTC), as long as it's viewed as a long-term and speculative investment. Last August, she told NextAdvisor she'd bought $5,000 worth of Bitcoin and she has no intention of selling it. "I don't plan to sell even my little amount, no matter what," she said.

Essentially, Orman believes cryptocurrency and Bitcoin should be part of your portfolio, but there are two key caveats:

• You need to be prepared to hold it for a long time. Orman says it's important to see Bitcoin as something that could be big in the future. Don't try to trade in and out in the short term.
• You should only invest what you're able to lose. Unlike other types of investments, Orman warns that there's a chance you could lose every penny you put in -- and you need to make your investment decisions accordingly.

Why Suze Orman likes Bitcoin

Orman dedicated a whole episode of her podcast last year to crypto, specifically to being on the right side of change. She encouraged listeners to invest a small amount of money in Bitcoin. A big reason for that? It could be the future.

"What are the millennials interested in today?" she asked. "They are interested in technology. They are interested in innovation. And they are also interested in Bitcoins." The other reason Orman believes we should pay attention to Bitcoin is because major corporations and financial institutions are starting to put money into the granddaddy of crypto. Orman says her early days of investing taught her to follow the big money.

It's not all rosy though. The high-profile financial guru has concerns about the impact regulation could have on the industry, and the high levels of volatility. She's also rightly worried about the way one or two people have an outsized impact on the market. "One person comes out and makes a comment, and it goes up… and then it goes down," she told NextAdvisor.

She's also voiced reservations about the way ransomware attackers use Bitcoin. She feels that if ransomware attacks increase, it would push the U.S. government to clamp down on Bitcoin. In late 2021, President Biden did indeed threaten to make ransomware a national security issue.

How Orman bought her first crypto

Orman initially invested in Bitcoin by proxy. Rather than buying cryptocurrency directly, she bought shares in MicroStrategy -- a company that's heavily invested in Bitcoin. At that point, Orman says she didn't know how else to buy Bitcoin. She felt crypto exchanges were too complicated, and she didn't want to have to set up a crypto wallet. The MicroStrategy investment was a way to buy crypto without actually buying crypto. She later sold those shares at a significant profit.

More recently, Orman used payment app PayPal to buy $5,000 of Bitcoin. Orman's initial reservations about crypto exchanges and wallets are understandable. Two or three years ago, a lot of platforms were not as user-friendly as they are now. Many potential investors struggled to buy their first crypto. But three years is a long time in the crypto world, and there are now several beginner-friendly exchanges that simplify the process. If you're considering buying your first crypto, check out our list of top cryptocurrency exchanges -- it takes just a few clicks to deposit money and invest.

Should you invest in Bitcoin?

Cryptocurrency truly entered people's consciousnesses last year. It saw growing numbers of first-time crypto investors, increased adoption, and growing institutional interest. However, don't buy Bitcoin just because everybody else is doing it. Do your own crypto research and make sure your crypto investments make sense for you and fit with your long-term financial goals.

Orman's advice to keep a long-term perspective on crypto investments makes a lot of sense. As does the instruction to only invest what you are comfortable losing. Bitcoin may well be the future, and it's certainly captured the imaginations of many millennials. But it's not right for everybody, and there's still a lot we don't know about how the industry will evolve.