If You’d Bought These Coins in 2014, This Is What You’d Have Made

Fall is here, and it’s a good time for reflection, regrouping and gearing up for the coming new year. In the case of crypto, looking back at the markets of the past puts things into similar perspective. An examination of the top 10 cryptocurrencies of just five years ago sheds light on how far crypto has come and how much opportunity has been either successfully leveraged or missed by investors and traders all over.

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Revisiting October 11, 2014

For those deeply engaged in the crypto space, days can seem like years for all the action, change and heated debate packed. It’s easy to forget just how far things have come and — not to put too fine a point on it — how much money has been made, lost or squandered. On October 11, 2014, the top 10 coins by market cap were as follows:

The price of bitcoin was just shy of $400, XRP wasn’t worth a cent yet, the currently 29th-ranked DOGE was a top five market cap competitor (although lower in price), and BTC maximalism wasn’t really a thing. But what would happen if one took a time machine back, and invested a thousand bucks ($100 each) into crypto’s top 10 of October 11, 2014?

Today’s Market

Coinmarketcap’s top 10 reads drastically different today. Bitcoin core remains on top, with an $8,550 valuation at press time. ETH, which in 2014 hadn’t even gone live, has since entered the top 10, snagging the number two spot with a market cap well exceeding $20 billion, and ripple is now worth 27 cents. Tether has since taken the crypto world by storm, but was then known as Realcoin, a solely Omni Layer protocol on the BTC blockchain. Position four today is also held by a newcomer, even though its history goes all the way back to Bitcoin’s genesis block – bitcoin cash.

So let’s say we’ve taken a time machine back to fall 2014, and invested $100 dollars in each of the top 10 cryptos (BTC, XRP, LTC, BTS, DOGE, NXT, PPC, NMC, XCP and DASH) on October 11. Not counting the various forks that have taken place since then, $1,000 invested evenly across the top 10 coins would result in a portfolio valued at an impressive $13,880 today. Not too shabby, especially considering the lucrative forks that would have also added to this number considerably. Of the 10 coins invested in, only four would turn out to be losers: NXT, resulting in a roughly $55 valuation today, PPC, reducing your $100 by nearly 75%, NMC, hacking over 50% off of the original investment value, and XCP, performing similarly, ending up at about $44 today.

The biggest gains would be found in XRP, with a 5,600% increase in price, DASH, with a gain of over 3,000%, and BTC, growing your $100 to a tidy $2,260. LTC ends up at about $1,500, and even DOGE comes back a winner on this timeline, growing the original investment over eight times. BTS, which has fallen from market cap glory since 2014 to rank 64, would still make you about three bucks. Better than a kick in the face, at least.

It’s Not All About the Money

If exercises like this can teach crypto traders and investors anything, it’s how little anyone really knows about the market’s unpredictable movements. Promising crypto projects sink into sub-decimal obscurity faster than one can say “shitcoin,” while forks and new coins rise up swiftly, bringing fierce market challenge to the old guard. Utility, adoption, innovation and community spirit all seem to play a part here, and mere dollar sign fluctuations don’t make or break a project. That said, every crypto enthusiast is at least a little interested in price, and who can blame them? Especially given the fact that so much stands to be gained on the choppy seas of crypto–particularly from a long game perspective.

To stay up on the price of your favorite cryptocurrencies, as well as SLP token markets, be sure to head over to markets.Bitcoin.com and enjoy the user friendly, multi-feature interface as you chart your course.

How would you invest in crypto differently if you could go back in time? Let us know in the comments section below.

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