How to Get $100M... get 18,000 ICP first

How to be worth 9 figures in the next 12 years

I woke up the other morning wondering what it would take to get to $100M by the time I’m 50. I’m currently 38 and will turn 50 in 2034 and the thought seemed preposterous… one hundred million dollars is so far out of reach given my current wealth level. But silly thoughts tend to lead me to run data-driven scenarios and the results of this scenario actually surprised me, enough that I decided to write about it. So, with some reasonable assumptions, what will it take for me (or you!) to get to $100,000,000 by 2034?

Let’s start with some assumptions:

1. I’ll assume I’m going to make this crazy amount of money through ICP; specifically staking it (8 years and forever-locked of course!) and letting the asset appreciate.

2. I’ll assume I’m going to simply merge maturity every month and that my yearly yield will be per the table below. Also (perhaps fantasy on my part) I’m assuming no tax liabilities on the merged maturity.

3. I assume that in 2034 there will be 500M ICP tokens in existence… only slightly more than in existence today. I actually think this is likely as my belief is that ICP will become deflationary (in terms of circulating supply) by 2024 or 2025.

4. I use a nice round figure for the market cap of the Internet Computer in 2034… $500B. This seems more than reasonable (perhaps even bearish) since the market cap today of AWS alone is estimated to be ~$500B.

Here’s a guess at what monthly-compounded yields might look like for the next 12 years, accounting for the decrease in inflation rate, the likelihood of more ICP on the NNS and the age bonus of a neuron formed today. Don’t get caught up on these numbers… they are just a random guess from me.

Assumptions 3 and 4 would result in a nice round $1,000 price tag on ICP in 2034, meaning I would need 100,000 ICP in 2034 to hit the nine-figure mark in USD. So what will it take today to hit 100,000 ICP in 2034? Surprisingly, it takes only 17,750 ICP today. The power of compounding!

Don’t get me wrong, 17,750 ICP is a lot (around a third of a million dollars today), but it’s shocking to me that it only takes that much. I also don’t feel like my assumptions are overly bullish on the condition that the Internet Computer survives until 2034 (as in, in scenarios in which the IC survives until 2034, it seems likely that most of those scenarios play out more bullish than my assumptions).

There may be a few seed and early round ICP investors reading this who are dissolving their neurons. Perhaps they should reconsider locking a small fraction of their investment back into the NNS in 8-year neurons in order to join the 9-figure club in 12 years. And hey, if you do, perhaps consider throwing a few thousand ICP my way to help me join you… consider it an early 50th birthday gift for me :)

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This newsletter is a focused on random data analyses related to the Internet Computer. Here’s a list of my recent articles that I think are most relevant to IC fans and investors: NFT Floors Rising, Predicting Supply-Demand, Death By Node Rewards?, Choose-Your-Own-IC2022-Adventure.

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