Thanks for the advice, yeah I know it's not a traditional or smart thing to do. But I've got time on my side if it doesn't pan out and honestly 20k isn't going to to change my life if I lose it. Yes it'll hurt but it's not going to change anything, but 1000+% would.
Don't you ever wish looking back that you might have taken more chances in your younger days in some game changer, however minute the chance might be.
The future value of $20,000 at a 10% interest rate for 30 years is almost $350,000.
Your opportunity cost is not $20,000. You are potentially giving up $350,000.
Assume that after taxes, you have $12,000 left from the $20,000 IRA. If it takes one year to make you 1000% investment and the likelihood of success is 20%, there are two outcomes. 80% of the time you end up with nothing. 20% of the time you end up with $120,000. From that you would also subtract taxes so let's call the one year net $80,000. You would then invest that at 10% for 29 years. The future value of that would be almost $1,270,000. However your chance of success is only .2, so your expected value of the investment is $254,000. So in this case, you're comparing a high risk investment with a EV of $254,000 to a very low risk investment of $350,000.
You can play with the numbers however you want. If it will take 5 years for the 1000% return but the likelihood of success is .5, then the EV would be about $433,000. So here the EV of the risky investment is better than the IRA. But one is high risk and one is low risk. You should take that into account.