Bitcoin has climbed 26% in almost four months.

Bitcoin's value has long been debated, but a strategist has worked out seven possible ways to help to decide the cryptocurrency's worth.

Bitcoin (BTCUSD) was up 0.4%, hovering around the $76,300 mark early on Thursday morning. The cryptocurrency had rallied last month as senators debated the Clarity Act, but even as the digital regulation legislation failed in the upper chamber it's held onto most of those gains.

Ned Davis Research sees bitcoin reaching a value of around $170,000 by 2030, and as high as $230,000 five years later, and for chief alternatives strategist John Laforge, there are a number of approaches for valuing the crypto and different reasons to use each one.

The method that best suits the asset involves looking at network adoption as this is the only one that is based on bitcoin's own data as opposed to comparisons, he wrote in a note published Wednesday. Laforge said the main way to assess this is by evaluating the number of owners, both directly and via exchange-traded funds, as well as looking at addresses holding a balance and transacting each day.

He wrote that another option is comparing bitcoin to similar assets, especially gold (GC00). "Gold and bitcoin are both rare bearer assets in a credit-consumed world. A bearer asset is one where holding it means owning it - there's no one in the middle that can freeze it, lose it, or tell you no," Laforge wrote.

He said the third method - which is likely the best one to use for the coming quarters - is following the level of money-supply growth. When money growth is above 4%, the investment research firm found, bitcoin responds positively. Whereas when the money supply contracts by 4%, the crypto has generally struggled.

Next, he wrote, the value could be assessed by looking at the cost of production, which Laforge said functions well as an indication of sentiment, and signals when miners decide to sell some of the crypto.

According to CoinShares, the average cost to one bitcoin among the listed miners was approximately $75,500 in the second quarter.

"Where this metric becomes useful, as an indicator, is when the cost to produce one bitcoin sits meaningfully higher than the market price for extended periods of time," he said. "When enough miners are desperate to cover operating costs, it can lead to forced selling and an ultimate cycle bottom."

Another method would be to examine how much to own, by looking at risk first. Based on bitcoin's price history, a 1% portfolio position adds about 2% to total risk, but it scales higher - a 4% position translate to 14% risk.

The sixth possible approach listed by Laforge is analyzing the bitcoin adoption cycle, but he noted that this is not an exact science and should involve accessing multiple different measuring techniques.

Finally, he put forward the stock-to-flow model for evaluating bitcoin's worth, one of the most popular. The model divides how much supply already exists divided by the amount that gets added every year.

But Laforge is the most skeptical about this strategy, explaining that its estimates have been off in the region of hundreds of thousands of dollars in recent years.

"What's wrong, in our estimation, is that it is too focused on the supply side," he said. "The demand side matters too, and demand has not grown high enough or strong enough to reach some of the model's price predictions."

-Nora Redmond