But if you pick one of the coins that "make it", that is, their protocol gets adopted by some industry or the world, then you definitely aren't looking at x10. You're looking at 100x...1000x...more.
Sure. Let's talk about Maize's 2500x gain for a second.
Let's stick with Bitcoin, to start with.
Bitcoin, over six years, went from ~1, to ~2500. Cool.
Now let's say you buy, or mine, or have, some Bitcoin. Are the same gains feasible?
I don't think so, and here's why. Each coin would be worth $6,250,000. If that doesn't sound absurd, consider this.
Every person who bought at least $400 worth of Bitcoin (or mined enough) when it was cheap ($1 or less) is now a "Bitcoin Millionaire." If the coin 2500x again, they'd each have 2.5
billion, or more (if they had more coins, so they had more than exactly 1MM right now).
Can we have that many bitcoin billionaires? Well, why does bitcoin rise in value? For the same reason gold might rise in value; it's what people are willing to pay. It's not producing an income, the way a stock market investment might. It's just what people are willing to pay.
The problem with valuing a bitcoin at 6.25MM is that people can't afford to drive the prices that high. You can't make that many billionaires out of a speculative item, because not only do you hit a point where people don't want to pay that, you hit a point where there's literally not enough money in the world to make each one worth that*.
*Yes, if massive inflation happens, but then those billions aren't worth much anyways; I'm talking real dollars.
Okay, so if Bitcoin can't 2500x any more, the vast majority of its gains are gone. What about ETH, the second most popular coin? Well, being at ~250 (+/-... ~190 as of this typing, but as high as ~400 a month ago), it's just a factor of 10 below BTC. It'll have the same problem that it can't grow that much.
So you're left with the other coins, if you're hoping for massive gains. But which ones? And who's to say they'll see those gains, or that you'll be in the right coin? What if a new coin pops up you aren't invested in, and then immediately sees a ton of growth you miss out on? (Say a government DOES decide they want a cryptocurrency; doubtful, as they wouldn't have control, but let's pretend--why wouldn't they issue their own, new coin, that would immediately jump up before you can get in?) Or are you going to keep investing in every new coin issued?
Even if not, you're probably trying to pick coins worth mere cents, and at that point, you're basically betting on penny stocks.
And how much do you have to bet to make it worthwhile? If you're investing in 10-20 coins, and want the amount your money goes up to actually be significant change, you'll probably need to invest thousands in each one.
Is that the best investment strategy with your money? (Again, I'm ignoring mining. If you can do that profitably, okay. Just talking buying and/or holding coins for appreciation's sake.)
My point with this post is that it doesn't seem like the big coins can make those sort of gains based on where they already are, and if you're trying to pick the longshots, why not go bet the ponies?
Maybe you hold some of the bigger coins for more modest gains (10x?), but then you get back to my previous question at the bottom of the last page of is it worth it for those sort of gains? I think I covered the problems with that already; I just wanted to address the "2500x" possibility here.