Realistic ROI

[Evanston45]

When I was telling my wife about cryptocurrency and how I think its a good investment, she asked me an interesting question. What percent return should one expect in a year? Lets say one decides to put $10,000 in...if it were the stock market, and that person is diversified, it would be reasonable to assume a 6-8 percent return for the average investor on an average year. I realize its hard to determine what "well diversified" means in crypto, but lets say 75% mixed with ETH, LTC, BTC and the other 25% in a mix of top 10 (NEO, Ripple etc). Clearly 2017 saw tremendous returns on these coins, but its not realistic to assume 2018 will also bring over 1000% returns like this year. I know there isn't much historical data to pull from, but just wondering what you guys think is a reasonable expectation (not to the moon as some say!)
So if one put $10,000 in on January 1 2018 in my model of diversification (i.e. someone new to the game who isn't going to buy ICO's and speculative coins), what do you see their balance being December 31, 2018?
Looking forward to hear everyones thoughts!

[bathrobehero]

Nobody knows.

I mean if you're just holding coins, really nobody knows what will happen in a year or so. Crypto is very volatile, high risk, unknown reward.


But other than holding and forgetting there are several other ways of investing inside of crypto;
 - mining: low risk, low to high reward depending on how much time you sink in;
 - staking: simple like holding but with growing funds and only need a wallet that's runing 24/7;
 - masternodes: almost exactly like staking, except you need a set amount of coins ($) to start a masternode but it's marginally more profitable than staking.
 - funding other people's projects/startups/visions (aka ICOs): complete and pure gambling.

There are probably a few other ways (like lending, day trading, bot trading, etc) but I'm not that familiar with them.

[Beicin]

Short answer: impossible to guess. Everyone is just blindly guessing upon what they think the potential for each coin is.

Most coins wont fulfill that potential, leaving many in disappointment... Thats why i think investing in low market cap coins without a product is a very risky thing to do in such a volatile market.

[Saifher]

This depends a lot on the coin you're investing... For 2018 i wouldn't expect more than 500% gains for bitcoin begin very optimistic. But for a coin like Ethereum and smaller market cap coins lik OMG, Ark, Vertcoin, etc its very possible to have more than 10x returns next year if crypto goes well.

[949miner]

Nobody is going to give you the right answer, but the next year is going to be a shoot for bitcoin.

So if you put $10,000 as you said, you need to expect about 230% of your invested amount.

Bitcoin can easily make x2 or a little bit more in just a year, and more in 2018, it is going to be the YEAR of bitcoin and there are no doubts about that.

Just look at all the upcoming news that we are going to get soon, bitcoin is going to skyrocket, and x2 is pretty small compared to the high returns that we are going to have in some months.

[darkflower]

When I was telling my wife about cryptocurrency and how I think its a good investment, she asked me an interesting question. What percent return should one expect in a year? Lets say one decides to put $10,000 in...if it were the stock market, and that person is diversified, it would be reasonable to assume a 6-8 percent return for the average investor on an average year. I realize its hard to determine what "well diversified" means in crypto, but lets say 75% mixed with ETH, LTC, BTC and the other 25% in a mix of top 10 (NEO, Ripple etc). Clearly 2017 saw tremendous returns on these coins, but its not realistic to assume 2018 will also bring over 1000% returns like this year. I know there isn't much historical data to pull from, but just wondering what you guys think is a reasonable expectation (not to the moon as some say!)
So if one put $10,000 in on January 1 2018 in my model of diversification (i.e. someone new to the game who isn't going to buy ICO's and speculative coins), what do you see their balance being December 31, 2018?
Looking forward to hear everyones thoughts!

In terms of sheer portfolio growth - no one can predict it or even give you the vaguest numerical estimate. Do some research on the technology behind some of these coins and find one that you just really believe in (they say invest in what you know for a reason.) For example: I personally think ETH is a disruptor and has crazy potential due to it's unique positioning.

Mining, I can tell you that I'm getting on average 2.5-3.2% Monthly ROI (after power, cooling, depreciation of hardware, tax and etc...factored in) here in Canada. BUT, with ETH for example, you will need at-least $200K+ to make it a viable income, it will require quite a lot of time at that point as well so be prepared. But, at that monetary scale, it's a huge risk for ETH specifically as having a 30% (CCA quoted) depreciation rate gives you a 3 year financial lifespan per rig to squeeze out the 90%+ ROI and Casper is due in late 2018 and who knows if we will have a viable mining alternative besides UBQ because PoS is far more beneficial for most coins in terms of technological advance. Of course, you can also foot the bill for Power (+ longterm liability for depreciation of equipment) and simply amass the coins, let portfolio grow in value and then participate in PoS (in respect to ETH of course.) I'm not too sure what the rates on BTC are like with equipment and all else, so I'll let someone else chime in there.

[Evanston45]

Thanks everyone. Sounds like most folks don’t have a expectation on what they feel is realistic. Totally understand. To the poster who suggested 230 percent, thank for for your answer...would be thrilled with that!

[bitofc]

if the diversified stocks or funds returns are around 6-8%, you only need to mention 12-16% to convince your wife to invest in cryptocurrency/blockchain!

even funds cannot guarantee to have fixed 6-8% EVERY year!

[The_Dark_Knight]

When I was telling my wife about cryptocurrency and how I think its a good investment, she asked me an interesting question. What percent return should one expect in a year? Lets say one decides to put $10,000 in...if it were the stock market, and that person is diversified, it would be reasonable to assume a 6-8 percent return for the average investor on an average year. I realize its hard to determine what "well diversified" means in crypto, but lets say 75% mixed with ETH, LTC, BTC and the other 25% in a mix of top 10 (NEO, Ripple etc). Clearly 2017 saw tremendous returns on these coins, but its not realistic to assume 2018 will also bring over 1000% returns like this year. I know there isn't much historical data to pull from, but just wondering what you guys think is a reasonable expectation (not to the moon as some say!)
So if one put $10,000 in on January 1 2018 in my model of diversification (i.e. someone new to the game who isn't going to buy ICO's and speculative coins), what do you see their balance being December 31, 2018?
Looking forward to hear everyones thoughts!

This is an interesting question and one that is very difficult to answer, but one experiment you can do is to look at the price of bitcoin at the beginning of each year and get the percentage of earnings of each year add them up and then divide by the number of years, if I recall correctly bitcoin has more or less doubled in price every year and if we take the amazing profits of this year then I suppose the average earnings of bitcoin are something close to 130% per year.

[nightmanisrightman]

Realistically if you are careful watch the markets and play your cards right you can easily make over 100% in a year which trumps whatever you could accomplish in the stock markets. Key words here are careful and play your cards right because just as easily you could lose as much. Not saying you would lose 100% but you could lose like 50% and that basically cannot happen with stocks (or very hard I think). More rewards but where more rewards there lies more risk as well.

[NathanJB]

When I was telling my wife about cryptocurrency and how I think its a good investment, she asked me an interesting question. What percent return should one expect in a year? Lets say one decides to put $10,000 in...if it were the stock market, and that person is diversified, it would be reasonable to assume a 6-8 percent return for the average investor on an average year. I realize its hard to determine what "well diversified" means in crypto, but lets say 75% mixed with ETH, LTC, BTC and the other 25% in a mix of top 10 (NEO, Ripple etc). Clearly 2017 saw tremendous returns on these coins, but its not realistic to assume 2018 will also bring over 1000% returns like this year. I know there isn't much historical data to pull from, but just wondering what you guys think is a reasonable expectation (not to the moon as some say!)
So if one put $10,000 in on January 1 2018 in my model of diversification (i.e. someone new to the game who isn't going to buy ICO's and speculative coins), what do you see their balance being December 31, 2018?
Looking forward to hear everyones thoughts!

Let us hear from the economics and finance experts regarding this question. We actually have a lot of data in terms of Bitcoin's growth because Bitcoin has been here for a while--almost a decade already. If we use the pattern of growth for Bitcoin, your $10,000 could easily reach $50,000 by the end of 2018. In altcoins, you can have a bigger profit. Let us try to consider Ethereum, for example, it used to be just less than $20 a year ago and it even went as down as less than $10 within 2017. Right now, the growth is around 5,000%. And that is less than a year even.

[Black_bl]

When I was telling my wife about cryptocurrency and how I think its a good investment, she asked me an interesting question. What percent return should one expect in a year? Lets say one decides to put $10,000 in...if it were the stock market, and that person is diversified, it would be reasonable to assume a 6-8 percent return for the average investor on an average year. I realize its hard to determine what "well diversified" means in crypto, but lets say 75% mixed with ETH, LTC, BTC and the other 25% in a mix of top 10 (NEO, Ripple etc). Clearly 2017 saw tremendous returns on these coins, but its not realistic to assume 2018 will also bring over 1000% returns like this year. I know there isn't much historical data to pull from, but just wondering what you guys think is a reasonable expectation (not to the moon as some say!)
So if one put $10,000 in on January 1 2018 in my model of diversification (i.e. someone new to the game who isn't going to buy ICO's and speculative coins), what do you see their balance being December 31, 2018?
Looking forward to hear everyones thoughts!

Let us hear from the economics and finance experts regarding this question. We actually have a lot of data in terms of Bitcoin's growth because Bitcoin has been here for a while--almost a decade already. If we use the pattern of growth for Bitcoin, your $10,000 could easily reach $50,000 by the end of 2018. In altcoins, you can have a bigger profit. Let us try to consider Ethereum, for example, it used to be just less than $20 a year ago and it even went as down as less than $10 within 2017. Right now, the growth is around 5,000%. And that is less than a year even.

You can make a huge profit if you select good ones!

[Prodigan786]

It’s really hard to predict but investing by mixing the coins will be profitable invest on bitcoin , ethereum , neo like that then keep some money for good potential altcoins which is introduced may it will give 100x return .

[Yawn85]

Bitcoin increase 10x since same time last year, I can only predict next year will be crazier than this year, maybe 20x?

[redbarf]

If I were you, I would stay with safer investments. Investing in cryptocurrency is like gambling at this point. The market could continue to rise, or rapidly fall. If you are going to invest, let it be your wife's idea and be prepared to lose it all.