If You Invested $1,000 in Riot Platforms Stock 5 Years Ago, This Is How Much You'd Have Now
As the company's name implies, Riot Platforms (NASDAQ: RIOT) is a Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) miner that's not afraid to show its revolutionary streak. Even as Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Gary Gensler continues to argue that Bitcoin is a "highly speculative, volatile underlying asset," Riot Platforms presses on as a relentless Bitcoin producer.
Granted, Bitcoin is volatile, and so is Riot Platforms stock. Still, a right-sized stake in this ambitious Bitcoin miner could produce riotous results for crypto-amenable portfolios.
Dizzying heights and gut-wrenching depths
There's no denying that a pre-COVID-19 position in Riot Platforms stock yielded outsized gains. However, riding out the peaks and valleys seems easier in hindsight than it undoubtedly was in real time.
Believe it or not, Riot Platforms stock traded for about $1 five years ago. After the pandemic panic came and went, speculative fervor set in; consequently, the share price catapulted above $70 for a hot minute in 2021.
Perhaps it wasn't Gensler but the Federal Reserve that threw a wet blanket on that rally. As the central bank imposed a series of interest rate hikes, traders sold risk-on assets like Riot Platforms stock.
Thus, the Riot Platforms share price recently landed at about $11.90; today's shareholders are either princes or paupers, depending on when they got into the trade.
In any case, a $1,000 stake in Riot Platforms stock purchased at $1 per share five years ago would have increased 1,060% to get to $11.60. Therefore, that $1,000 investment would now be worth roughly $11,600.
Achieving similar results during the next five years won't be easy because the starting point isn't $1 this time and Riot Platforms isn't a little-known nano-cap company anymore. Still, if you're going to have a dog in the race, Riot Platforms isn't your worst possible pick among Bitcoin producers.
Riot Platforms recently reinvested its capital into buying more Bitcoin miners, and the company's Bitcoin-production total grew 19% in 2023 from the prior year. Moreover, Riot Platforms produced 14.4 Bitcoin per day in February of this year and held 8,067 Bitcoin in total, if you can wrap your head around that.
Yet even while Riot Platforms remains an ultra-active cryptocurrency miner, the company also just made a strategic investment in Texas-based Reformed Energy, which converts solid and liquid waste into usable energy. This, one can hope, is a signal from Riot Platforms that the company is serious about addressing the vast energy-usage requirements of crypto mining.