Ten years can make quite a difference.
A recent Motley Fool calculation estimated that $1,000 invested in bitcoin on September 3, 2016 would have been worth a shocking $126,810 a decade later. (The exact figure depends on the prices and times used for the calculation, and that estimate excludes trading fees and taxes.)
But the larger point is hard to miss: Bitcoin’s long-term appreciation has been extraordinary.
It has also been anything but smooth.
Bitcoin reached an all-time high above $126,000 in October 2025, according to CoinGecko. As of this writing, it trades around $77,000 – roughly 39% below that peak.
That combination – enormous long-term appreciation punctuated by severe drawdowns – is important. Looking only at the beginning and ending prices can obscure just how much volatility an investor would have experienced along the way.
But there’s another problem with using bitcoin’s remarkable decade to understand cryptocurrency: Bitcoin isn’t the entire crypto market.
Bitcoin is the superstar – but that can distort the view
Human beings naturally remember winners. In investing, there’s even a name for one version of this problem: Survivorship bias.
Survivorship bias happens when we judge a group by looking at the members that are still around. Imagine reviewing the cryptocurrencies that exist today and asking how early crypto investments performed: The winners are easy to find because they survived, while failed projects have largely vanished from view. That can make the past look more successful than it really was. Bitcoin’s extraordinary record is real – but the many cryptocurrencies that disappeared, collapsed or simply went nowhere are part of crypto’s history, too.
We see and pay attention to bitcoin because bitcoin survived, grew and became the largest cryptocurrency in the world. Most of us have forgotten, or never heard of, the many digital assets that disappeared, stagnated or lost most of their value. Terra, BitConnect, Celsius, OneCoin, Squid Game Token, Titan… These are just a few of the names that didn’t make it.
All this doesn’t diminish bitcoin’s record. It just means we should be careful about using one exceptional winner to think of an entire category of assets.
Today, crypto is a much broader category than bitcoin alone.
The global cryptocurrency market at roughly $2.7 trillion today. Bitcoin represents about 57% of that total. Ether accounts for another 11%, while stablecoins and thousands of other digital assets make up the rest.
Those assets are all “crypto,” but they aren’t interchangeable.
Bitcoin was designed as a decentralized monetary network with a fixed maximum supply. The Ethereum network supports smart contracts and applications. Stablecoins generally aim to maintain a stable value relative to assets such as the U.S. dollar. Other tokens can be associated with decentralized finance (DeFi), blockchain infrastructure, governance, utility functions, privacy… It’s a long list.
The crypto industry has launched a lot of projects! And inevitably, some of those projects fail to thrive – or simply fail.
So asking whether “crypto” has performed well is more complicated than checking bitcoin’s price.
What the broader crypto market can tell us
One useful way to zoom out is to look at the total market capitalization of cryptocurrencies.
The chart makes two things clear.
First, crypto has developed into a market measured in trillions of dollars rather than the much smaller ecosystem it once was.
Second, its growth has been anything but steady.
CoinGecko reported that the total crypto market reached a record $4.4 trillion during October 2025. By the end of June 2026, it had fallen to about $2.1 trillion – more than 50% below that peak. It has since recovered somewhat, with CoinGecko putting the market around $2.7 trillion as of this writing.
That is not “steady valuation growth.” It is long-term expansion accompanied by periods of extreme volatility, contraction and recovery.
There’s another important limitation, too.
Total crypto market capitalization is not the same thing as an investment return.
Unlike tracking the return of one asset such as bitcoin, the total-market figure represents a changing universe. New cryptocurrencies are created. Others disappear. Token supplies change. Stablecoins enter circulation. CoinMarketCap currently tracks over 8,000 different assets.
In other words, you cannot look at the growth of total crypto market capitalization and conclude that someone who bought a diversified basket of cryptocurrencies ten years ago would have earned the same percentage return. First, that diversified basket would inevitably contain some failed projects – and second, your diversified basket would have trading, tax and other fees attached to it.
Overall, market capitalization is better used as evidence of the size and evolution of the sector’s ecosystem, not as a substitute for portfolio-performance data.
So what can a long-term investor take from this?
Probably not, “Bitcoin went up enormously, therefore I should buy bitcoin.” That’s a naive approach.
And not, “The crypto market grew, therefore spreading money among cryptocurrencies will automatically reduce my risk.” Diversification can spread exposure among different assets, but it does not guarantee lower losses. Crypto assets can also move together during broad market selloffs, and individual cryptocurrencies can carry risks very different from bitcoin’s.
The more useful takeaway is that a ten-year perspective changes the questions worth asking.
Instead of focusing exclusively on what a cryptocurrency did yesterday – or trying to identify the next bitcoin – consider the role an asset would play within your overall financial planning. Consider your objectives, time horizon, tolerance for large price swings, liquidity needs and how much you understand about the particular asset you’re evaluating. (Yes, that’s part of what we call due diligence.)
And distinguish between the crypto market and a specific cryptocurrency. They are not the same proposition.
Now, all that may sound less exciting than a “surefire” tip.
Good!
Retirement planning shouldn’t depend on information you overhear from somebody sitting two stools down at the bar.
Taking the longer view inside a retirement account
For people who decide, after considering their objectives and risks, that they want exposure to supported digital assets as part of their retirement savings, account structure is another factor to understand.
A Digital IRA allows eligible investors to hold supported cryptocurrencies through a self-directed retirement account. The tax treatment depends on the type of IRA and the investor’s circumstances.
With a Traditional IRA, deductible contributions and earnings are generally taxable when distributed. With a Roth IRA, contributions are not deductible, but qualified distributions can be tax-free when IRS requirements are met.
Those tax rules don’t make cryptocurrency less volatile, eliminate the possibility of loss or determine whether a particular digital asset is appropriate for you. They simply provide a retirement-account structure within which eligible assets can be held.
BitIRA helps customers establish and manage self-directed Digital IRAs that can hold supported cryptocurrencies. The investment decisions reman your own.
Bitcoin’s last decade is remarkable history. But perhaps the more useful lesson is what happens when we stop staring at the superstar and look at the whole field.
Crypto has become larger, broader and more established than it was ten years ago. It has also remained volatile, uneven and full of meaningful differences among individual assets.
For a long-term investor, understanding both sides of that story is far more useful than simply asking which coin went up the most.
If you’d like to learn more about how holding supported digital assets within a retirement account works, download our free Essential Guide to Digital IRAs. And if you’ve completed your due diligence and are ready to get started right now, you can open a Digital IRA with BitIRA online (anytime, day or night) in less than ten minutes.
