$1000 invested into the top 20 currencies on 1/1/17, ($50 per coin) would be $64802 on 12/31/17.  People like to call bitconnect a ponzi scheme but tend to not want to apply that critical thinking to crypto values in general.

Their business model is take your BTC, and exchange it for coins they control the value of, then have people also lend them those essentially doubling their purchasing power, then pay people out in fiat .009ish% per day.  All they had to do for all of 2017, is hodl most their assets.  Occasionally paying people out in full.

I have a small investment with them, it's money I've set aside as very high risk.  I also have a small investment in my own mining, some money put in cloud mining and some money that is invested in coins with the intent of holding for a few years.

All of this is high risk, it's riskier then just buying an S&P 500 index fund, or gold.  Some will pay off, some will be a loss.