What Investing in Today’s Top 5 Cryptocurrencies Would Have Netted You In A Year

4 min readJan 16, 2022

A year is a long time in crypto; rankings shift, market caps grow and decline, new projects are brought to life and old ones fade away. As bull and bear markets come and go, and trends emerge and die, investors’ portfolios ride green and red waves; some reach the very top, and others crash and burn.

It is the favorite pastime of many to look back and contemplate on all the gains and opportunities they missed out on, and we are no exception. In this article, we’ll be taking a look at the current top 5 cryptocurrencies by market cap (excluding stablecoins, of course) and see what profits (or losses) we could’ve made had we invested in them about a year ago.

1- BTC

Price A Year Ago: ~$33,922*

Current Price: ~$43,268**

Market Cap: ~$818,856,274,683**

When it comes to Bitcoin, people hardly look back a mere year or two, rather, they prefer looking back a decade — when they could have snatched a Bitcoin for a few dollars. Alas, that ship has long since sailed, but as the saying goes “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now”.

A year ago Bitcoin was worth around $33,922, which today would have netted around 22% in returns. Considering the substantial price of Bitcoin, it is an impressive figure, to say the least. To put it into perspective, investing in gold a year ago would have resulted in a loss of around -6.64%.

2- ETH

Price A Year Ago: ~$1,043*

Current Price: ~$3,334**

Market Cap: ~$397,238,037,082**

Ethereum is no stranger to mooning either, so much so that its gas fees today are higher than what the token used to go for in its early days. On one hand, it is a curse, and on the other, a testimony to the success of the network — a display of sizable activity and traffic on the most popular smart contract blockchain in the market.

Going back a year, we’ll find Ethereum going for around $1,043; to translate into profits, it would have netted around 197% in returns. Almost tripling your investment is a noteworthy feat, especially considering the current state of the market.

3- BNB

Price A Year Ago: ~$40.14*

Current Price: ~$496**

Market Cap: ~82,828,832,802**

It is no surprise to see the native token of the biggest exchange in the market make it in the top 3, but would users have seen the potential it possessed? Today the BNB token lies at the core of what Binance refers to as CeDeFi — Centralized-Decentralized Finance.

BNB used to cost about $40.14 a year back, which if invested then, would have resulted in roughly 1,022% in gains — a 10x with a little more to spare. With so many users, Dapps and GameFi projects in its ecosystem, it only makes sense to see BNB where it is today.

4- SOL

Price A Year Ago: ~$3.27*

Current Price: ~$150**

Market Cap: ~$47,182,773,409**

The best-performing digital asset on this list, Solana, is a great example of how unpredictable the market can truly be. 2021 was arguably the best year for SOL so far, as the token pumped despite network outages, fears of centralization and other negative factors that would have tanked the price of any other token.

A year ago a SOL would have sold for around $3.27; today, however, a token will go for a whopping $136. This translates to around 4,080% in profits — an almost 41x return on investment. Needless to say, this token takes the cake as the most profitable investment of the top 5, but we still have one more token to cover.

5- ADA

Price A Year Ago: ~$0.31*

Current Price: ~$1.37**

Market Cap: ~$45,938,562,880**

Cardano is perhaps one of the more interesting projects on this list, with so many people closely following its development, and eagerly awaiting for Dapps to deploy on its network. With the release of smart contract functionality, those days aren’t too far away.

As for the price, it used to go for around $0.31 back in the day, which if invested in during those days, would have yielded about 275% in gains. According to holders of the token, a year is a drop in the bucket for the long-term project, so who knows where this figure can go in the future.

References:

*Roughly relative to the time of writing

**As of 16th of January, 2022

Almost all figures used are rounded for simplicity

What Does This Tell Us?

Of course, it goes without saying that hindsight is 20/20, meaning it’s easy to look back and see how profitable these tokens have been; but nothing is certain, and making investments is always going to be a difficult, time-consuming and stressful affair — especially in a market as volatile as that of cryptocurrencies.

Precog Finance eases most of these burdens by trading on your behalf; Our AI-driven Sentient trading platform is lightning-fast, and, thanks to a combination of machine learning and continuous expert optimization, also perpetually self-improving. Sentient trades around the clock every day and only executes trades that are profitable and with low risk. Its various trading strategies are self-adaptive and thus much more flexible and adaptive than simply buying and holding (going long) cryptocurrencies. Therefore, by design, it suits all market conditions and not just bullish markets.

If the figures above impress you, then better stay alert as the market is going to continue growing as more and more investors jump aboard and start using crypto. This increase in activity serves to benefit Precog Finance’s protocol as an increase in trading volume presents both new and larger trading opportunities in the DeFi space for Sentient to generate trading profits from.