Every year, Americans spend over $70 Billion on lottery tickets, with the lowest bracket of earners each spending on average $412 a year. Recently, James Todaro spread a chart around Twitter which highlights how much those citizens could have made over the last 9 years if that money had been spent on Bitcoin instead.
Todaro, a Managing Partner at Blocktown Capital, tweeted a chart compiled by the firm highlighting what an investment of $412 in Bitcoin would be worth today, organized by the years that Bitcoin has been in existence.
It isn’t particularly surprising to find that if one invested just last year, the value of the purchased Bitcoin would now be around $500 (still not a bad return). What is notably more impressive are the returns on each year going back before that. Just going back to 2017 now yields $1,500, and two years earlier the same investment is now worth $22,000. The culmination comes with a whopping $29,000,000 current valuation of a purchase of just over $400 from 2010.
Americans spend $72B annually on lottery tickets. Most players are from the lowest economic class.
Households w/ incomes <$30k spend $412 PER YEAR on lottery tickets.
Here is the net-worth today by start year if they dollar cost averaged $412 into bitcoin instead. $BTC #bitcoin pic.twitter.com/5bFrFr42wp
— James Todaro, MD (@JamesTodaroMD) October 29, 2019
For Growing Wealth, Investment Beats Chance
The implications aren’t too subtle. If the common citizen was investing in cryptocurrencies over the last decade instead of buying lottery tickets, many would already be as rich as they had hoped to become through fate. Given that the average lottery player loses $0.40 on every dollar spent, the smarter financial choice is obvious.
Todaro isn’t alone in spreading this word. Trenton Gaddis, for example, has been promoting this message in Spain for some time now.
The great #people of #Spain The "Path to Riches" is not by playing the #Lottery and invest that would be #lotterymoney in #bitcoin instead or ideally an equally-weighted-basket of the #Top10 #Cryptocurrencies by market cap but this is the path to retire.#RetirementPlanning pic.twitter.com/82iXWiJult
— Trenton ‘Stop Acquiescing’ Gaddis (@DDGaddis) May 8, 2018
While the numbers make it clear which path will lead to more prosperity, not everyone is looking at the situation rationally. Many people play the lottery for the thrill, not as a financial strategy. Exposure to Bitcoin for these types could potentially lead to far greater losses than lottery tickets ever could.
Bitcoin Can’t Solve Everything
It is true that Bitcoin has outperformed virtually all forms of investment, including top stocks, as BeInCrypto has previously reported. However, it has also been noted that many who suffer from gambling addiction have similar self-control issues with cryptocurrency trading. Those who compulsively buy lottery tickets to “get rich quick,” may well struggle with investing in Bitcoin as they could begin high-risk trading as a means to get that “little bit more.”
Regular investment is already close enough to gambling, but when you factor in leverage trading the losses accrued can be enough to ruin a person. Anyone addicted to the rush involved with the lottery could certainly be seduced by such trading practices. It is clear that the message shouldn’t be as simple as giving up the lotto for Bitcoin. Still, anyone who gambles in the hope of becoming wealthy may want to reassess their risk/reward model and consider shifting away from games of chance and towards a quickly growing new world of digital assets.
Images are courtesy of Twitter, Shutterstock.
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