The irony of cryptocurrency is that people only tend to remember the winners.
We see the headlines: if you had put $1,000 into Solana in 2020, that investment would be worth roughly $61,000 today. At its absolute peak, it would have been a staggering $184,000. Looking back, it sounds like an easy win, but that perspective is incredibly skewed.
Back then, Solana wasn't the "Solana" we know today. It was just one of dozens of new chains—another bet, another "possibility" in a sea of competition. Most of those other projects failed. Some vanished quietly, some spiked and then crashed into irrelevance, and others still exist today but are completely ignored by the market.
When people flash these massive ROI numbers, the narrative feels incomplete. For every $1,000 bet that turned into a fortune, how many others simply evaporated?
Think about the human element, too:
The "Early" Sellers: How many people sold when they doubled or tripled their money? They felt like geniuses at the time, only to watch the rest of the life-changing gains pass them by.
The "Holders" of Nothing: Even worse, how many people held onto a different project with the same conviction, only for it to never return?
The result only looks "obvious" once it’s too late to act on it. When you’re actually in the middle of it, it isn't a guaranteed $184,000—it’s just a high-risk gamble.
Even now, most projects will never "make it." While the potential for profit is always there, there is a profound silence surrounding everything that failed. That is the part of the story people should focus on more: not just the success that happened, but the countless failures that almost happened to the winners, and the many losses that are conveniently forgotten.
