Bitcoin Has Seen Pretty Incredible Investment Returns Compared To Big Companies

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Cryptocurrency Bitcoin, and the long-term value of investing in it, continues to be a matter of heated debate among those interested in such things. Right now, it's seeing a definite good phase, and it can be at the very least interesting to take a look at how it's fared as a straightforward investment over the last ten years compared to big, successful publicly traded companies. One Reddit user did that, crunching the numbers and coming up with some interesting results.

According to those numbers, a thousand dollar investment in Bitcoin in 2009 (not quite ten years ago, but close enough to a decade for purposes of illustration) would be worth $160 million worth of bitcoins as of the end of October of this year. Now, take a look at what a similar investment in some big, successful companies would have yielded over the course of a decade:

Netflix – $51,966

Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images

Amazon – $12,398

Apple – $6,228

Starbucks – $4,687

Nike – $3,319

Mike Lawrie/Getty Images

Alphabet (Google) – $2,922

Disney – $2,824

McDonald's – $2,793

PAUL J. RICHARDS/AFP/Getty Images

Mylan – $2,374

Microsoft – $2,260

FedEx – $2,185

Wal-Mart – $1,931

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Coca-Cola – $1489

Pfizer – $1,425

General Electric – $490

As you can see, even the most profitable of those hypothetical investments – Netflix – holds a candle to Bitcoin in terms of the value of the return. Of course, what these figures don't show you is the steep drops in value that have also happened over the course of the history of the cryptocurrency, and that are in fact still possible. Compared to investments in relatively stable, safe companies like the ones in the above list, it figures that taking a risk on something like Bitcoin would offer a sizable potential reward. But it's still interesting to consider how much it would have paid to be a loyal Bitcoin investor from the beginning – especially when compared to other lucrative investments over the course of the last decade.

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