In the first episode of Business Insider's web segment "the bit", Lee explained his methodology in arriving at the $25,000 number — which he says is a conservative estimate. He revealed that FundStrat values bitcoin similarly to how it would value a social network — using a principle known as Metcalfe's law. He says that, according to Metcalfe's law, the value of a network is the square number of its users:

"And so if you build a very simple model valuing bitcoin as the square function number of users times the average transaction value. 94% of the bitcoin moved over the past four years is explained by that equation," Lee explains.

He adds that, in the digital age, "personal information is our gold", and because bitcoin is essentially a database with an unprecedented level of security, it is digital gold. He uses this comparison quite literally; he expects that younger investors who have never known a world without the internet will increasingly use bitcoin as a store of value in place of precious metals, as their parents and grandparents did: