The soaring price of Bitcoin BTC/USD to all-time highs led to many long-time believers celebrating and sometimes dunking on the many skeptics who predicted the death of the leading cryptocurrency.
In 2018, entrepreneur and startup investor Jason Calacanis was among the people who said there was a high probability of Bitcoin going to zero. Here's a look back.
What Happened: Entrepreneur and investor Calacanis may be best known for being a co-host on the popular All-In Podcast, alongside David Sacks, David Friedberg and Chamath Palihapitiya.
While Palihapitiya has been pro-Bitcoin over the years and encouraged people to allocate 1% of their assets to Bitcoin in 2013, Calacanis has been less receptive.
On Nov. 26, 2018, Calacanis tweeted a chart of Bitcoin at the price of $3,731 and said it was highly likely the cryptocurrency would go to zero.
"Bitcoinzero is still the likely case (60-70%) if you own Bitcoin, understand it's a highly manipulated currency, with no rules or regulations…. If you didn't get in early, you're the sucker at the table. $3,700…. Ouch," Calacanis tweeted.
The tweet came after Bitcoin saw its price decline sharply in 2018 after a soaring price in 2017.
Fast forward to today and Bitcoin is now trading near $90,000.
Recently, Calacanis shared his old tweet and again expressed some doubt that Bitcoin will continue trading higher, while also admitting that he or his companies own some of the crypto.
"I'm SHOCKED that Bitcoin hasn't been banned by western governments — who are going to lose a LOT of power as it becomes ubiquitous….and I'm somewhat shocked that a nation state, hacker collective, etc. hasn't figured out a way to compromise the network. Which says something about the brilliance of bitcoin's architecture…full disclosure we own a ton of it, which we bought at $100-$200 and we've never sold.
In the Nov. 10 tweet, Calacanis said it now feels that Bitcoin is "too big to fail," but said there is still a less than 5% possibility that Bitcoin goes to zero.
Read Also: Bitcoin Nears $90,000—How High Can The Apex Crypto Go?
Investing $1,000 in Bitcoin: Sometimes it pays to follow famous investors’ callouts on investment opportunities and other times it pays to fade them and do the opposite.
In the case of Calacanis' prediction of Bitcoin as zero, investors would have done well to bet against the All-In Podcast co-host.
Bitcoin traded between $3,643.92 and $4,107.14 on Nov. 26, 2018, when Calacanis shared the picture of the Bitcoin chart and price.
A $1,000 investment at the high price of the day could have bought 0.2435 BTC at the time.
Today that investment would be worth $21,676.86, up 2,067.7%.
Compare that to the SPDR S&P 500 ETF, which tracks the S&P 500 Index. A $1,000 investment in the ETF could have bought 3.73 shares on Nov. 26, 2018. The $1,000 investment would be worth $2,226.03 today, up 122.6%.
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