Inside OnChainFX's Breakeven Multiple and the Winners of Last Alt Season

To help illustrate those losses, OnChainFX recently added a Breakeven Multiple to its cryptocurrency metrics display.

Of the 107 cryptocurrencies listed, the range they had to "x" to break even varied from 1.1x to 39.6x. The reason for such a large spectrum can be explained by the exponential relationship between percent loss and the breakeven multiple.

A 40 percent or 50 percent loss requires a cryptocurrency to 1.66x or 2x to break even, respectively, and an 80 percent or 90 percent loss must multiply by a factor of 5 or 10.

To help demonstrate this further, imagine you started with an original investment of $100. If you incurred a 50 percent loss, your investment, now worth $50, would have to double to break even at $100. At the further end of the spectrum, a 90 percent loss would require your $10 investment to multiply by a factor of 10, and a 95 percent loss would require your remaining $5 to multiply by a factor of 20.

Another investor, a Korean teacher, lost 90 percent of the $90,000 she invested after drawing on her savings, an insurance policy and a $25,000 loan.

In 2017, Bitcoin and Ethereum rose by more than 1,500 percent and 10,000 percent, respectively.

Verge started the year at $0.0019 and finished at $0.2226, a 1,171,479 percent gain or an 11,714x.

Nano started the year at $0.0097 and finished at $21.26, a 219,072 percent gain or a 2190x.

NEO started the year at $0.145 and finished at $75.96, a 52,372 percent gain or a 523x.Ripple started the year at $0.0064 and finished at $2.30, a 35,781 percent gain or a 357x.NEM started the year at $0.003676 and finished at $1.03, a 27,747 percent gain or a 277x. Given these numbers, it's certainly possible for cryptocurrencies to do the required "x" to breakeven or create new ATHs.

Although people were advised to DYOR and only invest whatever they were prepared to lose, the exorbitant gains investors saw others making encouraged them to follow blindly.