Crypto investment calculator: what $1,000 from 2021 is worth now

Five years ago this month the crypto market stood near its peak, and bitcoin set a record close to $69,000 on 10 November 2021. Ten of our coin guides start their crypto investment calculator from a November 2021 price, so we ran it for all ten. If you had put $1,000 into each, two positions would be worth more today. Zcash turned $1,000 into about $7,400, and Filecoin turned it into $13.

The ten results

Prices for today come from CoinGecko on 5 November 2026 at 15:00 UTC. The value of $1,000 bought in November 2021:

• Zcash: $7,425 (ZEC cost $169.70 then and $1,260 now);
• Render: $1,548;
• Quant: $726;
• Aave: $399;
• Cronos: $235;
• Hedera: $174;
• Ethereum Classic: $133;
• Internet Computer: $54;
• Algorand: $53;
• Filecoin: $13.

Eight of the ten lost money. Six of them lost more than three quarters. Bitcoin trades at $77,823, about 13% above its November 2021 record.

Zcash and Render

Zcash spent most of those five years below its 2021 level. In July 2024 ZEC touched $16.08. In autumn 2025 traders turned back to privacy coins, and ZEC rose tenfold in two months, from $40.55 on 1 September to $404.54 on 31 October, by Binance closing prices. It has since tripled again, and our Zcash guide follows the coin from its 2014 research paper to the rally.

Render rents out idle graphics cards to artists and studios and pays for the work in its token. In 2023 it moved from Ethereum to Solana, and holders swapped RNDR for RENDER at one to one. AI companies bought up graphics cards, and RENDER hit $13.53 in March 2024. At $1.54 today it trades 89% below that high and still above the November 2021 price.

Filecoin

Filecoin pays people with spare disk space to store other people’s files. The network launched in October 2020, and FIL reached $236.84 on 1 April 2021. By November 2021 it had already lost almost three quarters of that. It kept falling and set its lowest price, $0.6124, on 18 August 2026. About 839 million FIL now circulate, and our Filecoin guide explains how storage providers earn them.

What the calculator leaves out

The calculator divides today’s price by the starting price and ignores staking rewards, exchange fees and taxes. A holder who staked Algorand or Hedera for five years would own more coins than the calculator shows. The starting price is one day’s figure, so a week earlier or later in November 2021 changes the result.

What it means for you

Filecoin and Internet Computer ranked in the top 30 by market cap in November 2021. Today CoinGecko puts them 86th and 63rd. Before you compare coins, check the year each one started from. Each guide in our assets section has the calculator with two or three starting years, so you can test the same coin from different entry points.

Past returns do not predict future ones. This is not investment advice. Prices as of 5 November 2026, 15:00 UTC.