This Crypto Has Turned $1,000 Into Almost $100,000 in 9 Months

Fantom (FTM) is up over 9,700% since the start of the year.

If you'd bought $1,000 worth of smart contract crypto Fantom (FTM) at the start of the year, today it would be worth a whopping $98,108 -- a return of over $97,000.

On January 1, your $1,000 investment would have got you 59,102 FTM tokens worth 0.01692 each. As of yesterday, those tokens were worth $1.66 each, according to CoinMarketCap -- adding up to some eye-watering returns.

How other coins stack up

To put Fantom's growth in context, here's how other top cryptocurrencies have performed since the start of the year.

• Bitcoin (BTC): Your $1,000 would be worth $1,600 today.
• Ethereum (ETH): Your $1,000 would be worth $4,646 today.
• Cardano (ADA): Your $1,000 would be worth $13,892 today.
• Solana (SOL): Your $1,000 would be worth $124,636 today.
• Dogecoin (DOGE): Your $1,000 would be worth $53,963 today.

Like the coins above, Fantom is available from several top cryptocurrency exchanges.

What Fantom does

Fantom is a smart contract cryptocurrency platform that -- like many Ethereum wannabes -- promises fast transactions and low costs.

Ethereum was the first cryptocurrency to offer smart contracts, and it changed the game for blockchain. Smart contracts are tiny pieces of code that live on the blockchain and allow it to run applications and even other cryptocurrencies.

This capability powers a lot of the decentralized finance (DeFi) industry that cuts the middleman out of a host of financial transactions. Smart contracts, for example, mean an insurance broker might pay out automatically when certain conditions are met -- without the need for anyone to file a claim.

Fantom's price surge reflects extraordinary investor interest in next-generation smart contract platforms. It's also made some big announcements, such as the launch of Rarity, a game in which players can craft and trade non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Trade in NFTs, which are a type of digital collectible, is also booming right now. NFTs use smart contracts to store ownership information, making each one unique, and NFT gaming is a popular sector.

The dangers of "what if" in investing

It can be fun to play the "what if" game, but life doesn't work that way. We'd all be millionaires if we'd bought Bitcoin, Ethereum, or Amazon in the earliest days. One of the factors driving huge cryptocurrency gains is an investor desire to get involved in this nascent technology early. Just as in the early days of the internet, people are scared of missing out on the next big thing.

But with over 11,000 cryptocurrencies on the market, it takes time, patience, luck, and perhaps even a touch of genius to weed through the options and pick one that might turn $1,000 into $100,000 in less than a year. That, and a high tolerance for risk.

Bear in mind that over 2,000 cryptocurrencies have already failed. If you'd put $1,000 into one of them, you'd have lost all your money. And if you'd bought $1,000 of Fantom at its first peak in May, you'd have watched it lose over 80% in two months before rising again. That's one reason it's best to take a long-term approach to investing.

Crypto investing can be volatile and speculative. You may generate stratospheric returns on a coin like Fantom, but there are no guarantees. Plus, the market is unpredictable and relatively unregulated. For example, nobody could have known that Elon Musk (apart from perhaps Musk himself) would adopt Dogecoin as his personal pet coin and push the joke coin into the mainstream. And the lack of regulation means we can't always trust the information these projects publish about themselves.

Picking the winners

As retail investors, the best way to pick potential winners is to learn as much as possible about the industry and then try to learn even more. Take a leaf out of billionaire investor Mark Cuban's book -- he says he spends several hours every day learning about crypto.

The more knowledge we have, the more we can watch for trends and identify promising coins before they make the leap. It also helps us know which experts are worth listening to, research a coin's fundamentals, understand whitepapers, and follow technological developments in the blockchain.

We have only seen a fraction of what blockchain might be able to achieve. Speedy smart contract platforms like Fantom could power a wealth of practical applications that weren't possible on Ethereum. For example, there's huge potential in supply chain management, healthcare, and governance.

If the cryptocurrency industry continues to grow, there's a good possibility that canny investors can make healthy returns over the long term. At the same time, heavy regulation, a change in market sentiment, or another large crypto hack could all blow the industry off course. Unfortunately, no one has a crystal ball. And trying to pick the next Fantom is a bit like pinning down the ghost in the machine.