Here's How Much You'd Have Today if You'd Bought Bitcoins a Few Years Ago
Virtual currencies like Bitcoins are speculative investments, to say the least. During my time writing about the Bitcoin scene, I've met people who came into unexpected windfalls, like a team of academics who bought Bitcoins for a research project at $5-$15 each and watched the price soar, multiplying their money 50 times over.
But I've also seen people make what were in retrospect costly mistakes, like the entrepreneur who prepaid 43 Bitcoins (worth $5,000 at the time) for a "Bitcoin ATM," then realized that if he had held onto the Bitcoin instead, he would have had $25,000 by the time the machine was delivered.
Here is how you would have fared if you'd invested $100 in Bitcoins at various points in the crypto-currency's history.
August 2, 2010
Bitcoin closing price: 6 cents
$100 buys 1666.7 BTC
Value as of April 16, 2015*: $372,624.12
December 17, 2012
Bitcoin closing price: $13.41
$100 buys 7.46 BTC
Value as of April 15, 2015*: $1,667.83
April 1, 2013
Bitcoin closing price: $133.76
$100 buys 0.75 BTC
Value as of April 15, 2015*: $167.14
November 25, 2013
Bitcoin closing price: $979.45
$100 buys 0.10 BTC
Value as of April 15, 2015*: $22.83
September 29, 2014
Bitcoin closing price: $359.43
$100 buys 0.28 BTC
Value as of April 15, 2015*: $62.20
January 12, 2015
Bitcoin closing price: $214.08
$100 buys 0.47 BTC
Value as of April 15, 2015*: $104.43
So, is buying Bitcoin ever a worthwhile investment?
"Don't invest your life savings in Bitcoin unless you're willing to lose your life savings," Bitcoin Foundation chief scientist Gavin Andresen told me in a May 2013 interview.
On the day Gavin told me that, I could have purchased one Bitcoin for $124. On the day I am writing this, I could sell that same bitcoin for $229. But that's nothing! If I'd had the foresight to sell Bitcoin at its peak at the end of 2013, my $124 investment could have netted me a tenfold return, selling for $1,242!
Of course, if you had purchased one Bitcoin at at the end of 2013, that $1,000 plus investment would have lost 80% of its value by today.
Disclosure: All Bitcoin prices in this article are from the CoinDesk Bitcoin Price Index. Carrie Kirby occasionally writes for CoinDesk.com.
*4/15/15 closing price $223.57
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