Forum user predicted IOTA at $40 in 2021; it now trades at $0.16

Forum user predicted IOTA at $40 in 2021; today it trades at $0.16

IOTA was worth $0.52 when a forum user predicted it would reach $40 before the end of 2021. Years later, the internet of things coin trades below $0.20 and has fallen to 133rd place by market capitalization. A 70x increase in market cap, the thesis behind that bet, never materialized. And it wasn't from a nobody.

From $0.52 to $40: the get-rich-quick arithmetic

The reasoning wasn't far-fetched on paper. If IOTA reached $40, its market cap would hit 111 billion, slightly below Ethereum's at the time. With Bitcoin and Ethereum rising, multiplying the total value by 70 didn't seem impossible: the coin had already been in the top 10 in 2017. According to the thread's narrative, the same author had made an identical bet on September 18, 2017, with IOTA at $0.50; three months later, on December 20, it hit 5.50. An 11x increase. The argument was: it's done it before.

The rally that did happen: $1.39 in March

Something truly moved. With the starting price at $0.52, IOTA climbed to 1.39 dollars in the first week of March. Volatility was dizzying: the same day it peine at $0.93 and reached $1.35 by the afternoon. Veterans advised caution. Placing a stop loss on an asset that ranges 40% daily is an act of faith, one seemed to say. Another summarized it with bar-room precision: you go to pee, the train leaves, and it takes your luggage. Several forum users celebrated the author's track record.

Chrysalis, DeFi, and the fundamentals problem

This is where the dismantling began. The bullish case relied on Chrysalis, the upgrade that promised smart contracts without fees and a tangle capable of competing in the decentralized finance arena. The counterargument was direct: ETH, Polkadot, and Cardano had a clear advantage in DeFi, and IOTA still hadn't eliminated its central coordinator, the point that no other network had replicated. One sentence summarizes the middle part of the debate: IOTA doesn't work yet, and therefore it trades based on a concept, not a product.

Why didn't good news move the price?

The technical diagnosis of the middle stretch deserves emphasis. If you take industrial adoption announcements —the German government using the tangle in roads, agreements with Bosch, Fujitsu, or Volkswagen— and release them into a bear market, with Bitcoin tanking, absolutely nothing changes. The price isn't moved by news; it's moved by the cycle. IOTA had reportedly been accumulating in a few hands for three years, and it would be those whales, not the enthusiasts, who would decide when to let go.

The liquidation: 3,000 euros turned into 400

The final numbers are the usual. An investor who entered in 2017 at an average of 1 dollar and without diversifying admits they left the project and still have two years to wait for the staking airdrop. Another calculates that the 3,000 euros they put in are now worth about 400, and that overall they are breaking even. The price fell to 0.16 dollars, with market cap at 133rd place. The most honest summary of the final stretch: all that's left is to trust the logo. And it's not a metaphor.

The one who was right in 2017 and wrong in 2021

The interesting thing isn't the coin, it's the method. Its author defines himself as a trader, not an investor: he changes his mind in minutes if the chart demands it, and he himself asks that no one imitate him. According to another participant, he recommended buying Bitcoin in 2015 and Ethereum at $80-100, and he nailed entry and exit points. Some argue that he didn't lie, but that the chosen asset was the wrong one. When the market falls, everyone wonders when it will come back.

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With the $40 deadline passed and the price three times below the starting point of that bet, sentiment is shifting towards something more modest: that the tangle technology will be used someday. It's possible. It's also possible it will be too late: whoever bought near the 2017 high of $5.80 would need a 36x increase just to break even.