Experts call bitcoin this year's worst investment

The most profitable investment this year was palladium, according to experts from FinExpertiza consulting. Meanwhile, the world’s most popular cryptocurrency bitcoin was named the most disastrous investment of 2018.

FinExpertiza’s research involved 14 investment instruments and 300,000 rubles ($4,330) as the basis sum, according to Rossiyskaya Gazeta.

The study found that bitcoin investors would have lost more than 213,000 rubles ($3,000) or 71.2 percent of the investment this year.

The most profitable investment of the outgoing year, according to FinExpertiza analysis, was palladium. The price of the precious metal has been hitting record highs lately, making it the best performer among major metals. With the 300,000 rubles invested, purchasers would have increased their capital by 30,000 rubles ($433), or 10.2 percent, by the end of the year.

“And if we look in retrospect, for example of two years, we will see that palladium, in general, has become the only metal with a positive return,” Nina Kozlova, general director of FinExpertiza, was cited as saying by the newspaper.

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Once hailed as the future of money, bitcoin has lost more than 80 percent of its value since last year's all-time high of $20,000.

Currently trading below $3,700, the cryptocurrency is likely to extend its losses to below $3,000, experts say.

Worth just a fraction of a penny in 2010, bitcoin has been hitting the headlines and attracting attention from everyone, including Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, and Jamie Dimon.

Bitcoin has divided opinion and has been called everything from a scam to the future of money.

The virtual currency has been declared dead 336 times now by 99bitcoins.com, a website keeping track of the crypto.

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