I bought $1k of the Top 10 Cryptos on January 1st, 2018 (FOUR YEAR REPORT)

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I bought $1k of the Top 10 Cryptos on January 1st, 2018 (FOUR YEAR REPORT)

EXPERIMENT – Tracking 2018 Top Ten Cryptocurrencies – FOUR YEAR REPORT – UP +34%

Find the full blog post with all the tables here.

Welcome to your monthly no-shill data dump: Here's the FOUR YEAR REPORT for the 2018 Top Ten Experiment featuring BTC, XRP, ETH, BCH, ADA, LTC, NEM, DASH, IOTA, and Stellar.

tl;dr

  • What's this all about? I purchased $100 of each of Top 10 Cryptos in Jan. 2018, haven't sold or traded, reporting every single month for four years. Did the same in 2019, 2020, 2021, and more recently, the 2022 Top Ten a few weeks ago. Learn more about the history and rules of the Experiments here. Snapshots taken on the 1st of each month.
  • December Highlights: A bloody, all-red month
  • Overall since Jan. 2018: ETH solidly in the lead, followed by BTC and ADA. After briefly pulling ahead earlier in the year, the 2018 Top Ten are now significantly underperforming the S&P 500 over the same time period. Q: So, big crypto fail, right?
  • A: Only if I stopped after the first year. The 2018+2019+2020+2021 Combined Top Ten Portfolios are returning 406%, much, much better than traditional markets over the same time period (fancy new chart at the very bottom of the post).

Some exciting new changes for 2022!

  1. I'll focus on 2022 Top Ten Portfolio reports + one other portfolio on a rotating basis (down to two reports per month)
  2. Incorporated Decentralized Finance (DeFi) for the first time.
  3. Factoring in stablecoin gains: In past years, I have not included the ROI that is possible with stables in the monthly reports. This year, I will detail ways to build on the $100 of USDC in the 2022 portfolio and gamify it a bit: my goal is to outperform as many as the other cryptos in the 2022 Top Ten Portfolio as possible (simple if it turns out to be a bear year, a bit more challenging if the 2022 market moons).
  4. Giveaways: Who doesn’t love a good old fashioned giveaway? I’ll be giving away crypto during the year, either through Twitter, Reddit, or my email list. I’m still figuring out the details, but aim to give away around $100 a month in crypto.
  5. Friendly competition: I will compare my homemade 2022 Top Ten Crypto Index Fund Experiment to a Total Crypto Market Cap Index Token ($TCAP r/TotalCryptoMarketCap) to see which one outperforms.

And here we go!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Four Year Report – UP 34%

https://preview.redd.it/c3c6wlctpgb81.jpg?width=1056&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=380248b14486edaa5749fba7a390198bf81260a0

Welcome to the four year report!

The 2018 Top Ten Crypto Index Fund Portfolio is BTC, XRP, ETH, BCH, ADA, LTC, IOTA, NEM, Dash, and Stellar.

December highlights for the 2018 Top Ten Portfolio:

  • 100% red month. IOTA falls the least, only down -4% (on news that staking on the Firefly wallet will yield two cryptos, Assembly and Shimmer).
  • ETH maintains a solid overall lead, BTC in second place, ADA in third. Three coins in the green since January 2018.
  • After four years, the 2018 Portfolio is +34%, behind the S&P 500’s ROI over the same time period.

December Ranking and Dropouts

Here’s a look at the movement in ranks since January 2018:

https://preview.redd.it/ulc9dwgvpgb81.jpg?width=412&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2eadc9a98ec75b726cef37af7cb716fddf3126db

Top Ten dropouts since January 2018: After four years of the 2018 Top Ten Experiment, only 40% of the cryptos that started in the Top Ten have remained. NEM, Dash, Stellar, Bitcoin Cash, IOTA, and Litecoin have been replaced by Binance Coin, Tether, DOT, SOL, LUNA, and USDC. NEM looks like it wants to be the first to drop out of the Top 100.

December Winners and Losers

December WinnersIOTA outperformed the pack, dropping only -4% this month. 100% of the cryptos in the red.

December Losers – Losing nearly a third of its value, Litecoin fell the most, down -30%. NEM followed LTC, dropping -27% in December.

Tally of Monthly Winners and Losers

After four years, here’s a tally of the monthly winners and losers over the life of the 2018 Top Ten Experiment.

https://preview.redd.it/lisz7rgxpgb81.jpg?width=411&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=cbf41f94e9716f0140f3a7dfff3f655fa9d21a59

With 11, Bitcoin has two more monthly wins than second place Cardano. NEM has finished last place most often (12 months out of 48).

Bitcoin is still the only cryptocurrency that hasn’t yet lost a month since January 2018 (although it has come very close a couple of times).

Overall Update – 2021 ends with a whimper. After four years, ETH in first place, and Dash and NEM tied for worst overall performance.

After reaching an All Time High (+72%) in October, the 2018 Top Ten Portfolio continued to lose value. After four years of holding these cryptos, only 3 out of the 10 cryptos are in the green: BTC, ETH, and ADA.

Overall, first place ETH (+413%) is well ahead of BTC (+257%) and third place ADA (+99%).

The initial $100 invested in first place ETH four years ago? It’s worth $515 today.

DASH and NEM are virtually tied at the bottom, both down over -86% since January 2018. The initial $100 invested in each four ago is worth about $13 today.

Total Market Cap for the entire cryptocurrency sector:

https://preview.redd.it/mldnsr7zpgb81.png?width=582&format=png&auto=webp&s=d82435bc0e39657707f2143fb5dd1951f6ddcfd1

End of December 2021 market cap: $2,211,626,655,207

The total crypto market dropped significantly in December. Crypto as a sector is still up +285% since January 2018.

There was no easy way to achieve this at the time, but if you were able to capture the entire crypto market since New Year’s Day 2018, you’d be doing much, much better than the Experiment’s Top Ten approach (+34%), the return of the S&P (+78%) over the same period of time, and nine of the individual cryptos within the 2018 Top Ten (except for Ethereum).

Crypto Market Cap Low Point in the 2018 Top Ten Crypto Index Experiment: $114B in January 2019.

Crypto Market Cap High Point in the 2018 Top Ten Crypto Index Experiment: $2.65T in October 2021.

Bitcoin dominance:

https://preview.redd.it/qygnx0a0qgb81.png?width=487&format=png&auto=webp&s=567958cf7214839fa7befa749d61125dade6a9a8

BitDom declined a bit in December, ending the month at 40.2%. When looking at the entire four year 2018 Experiment time frame, BTC dominance is near the low end. For context:

Low Point in the 2018 Top Ten Crypto Index Experiment: 33% in January 2018.

High Point in the 2018 Top Ten Crypto Index Experiment: 70.5% in August 2019.

Overall return on $1,000 investment since January 1st, 2018:

https://preview.redd.it/cxtd9lb1qgb81.jpg?width=339&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=25b3da0034194812e2b66f977450fff1555b48fb

The 2018 Top Ten Portfolio lost $325 in December.

If I decided to cash out the 2018 Top Ten Experiment today, the $1000 initial investment would be worth $1,341, up 34% from January 2018.

Green is unfamiliar territory for the 2018 Top Ten Portfolio and a recent development. Over the first four years of the 2018 Index Fund Experiment, thirty-eight months have been in the red, with only ten months of green. And all ten of the green months have come in 2021.

Here’s a look at the ROI over the life of the experiment, month by month, since the beginning of the 2018 Experiment four years ago:

https://preview.redd.it/cbumx113qgb81.jpg?width=654&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7bba9861143359ff6b70ff0ca8e6ba75de5d00d6

The all time high for this portfolio is October 2021 (+72%). The lowest point was in January 2019 when the 2018 Top Ten Portfolio was down -88%.

Remember: no one can predict the value of any crypto tomorrow, let alone next month or next year. The 2018 Top Ten Crypto Portfolio was down -88% after one year, -80% after two years, -25% after three years.

Combining the 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021 Top Ten Crypto Portfolios

Alright, that’s that for the 2018 Top Ten Crypto Index Fund Experiment recap.

But I didn’t stop the Experiment in 2018: I invested another $1000 in the 2019, 2020, and 2021 Top Ten Cryptos as well ((and, just announced, again in 2022!). How are the other Crypto Index Fund Experiments doing?

So overall? Taking the four portfolios together, here’s the bottom bottom bottom bottom line:

After a $4,000 investment in the 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021 Top Ten Cryptocurrencies, the combined portfolios are worth $20,257 ($1,341 + $6,044 + $8,951 + $3,921).

That’s up +406% on the combined portfolios, down from last month’s all time high for the combined Top Ten Index Fund Experiments. Here’s the combined monthly ROI since I started tracking the metric in January 2020:

https://preview.redd.it/xcl80o35qgb81.jpg?width=511&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e2cd4923360a5492259faf606b3649c893fd4b16

That’s a +406% gain by investing $1k in whichever cryptos happened to be in the Top Ten on January 1st (including stablecoins) for four years in a row.

Comparison to S&P 500:

I’m also tracking the S&P 500 as part of the Experiment to have a comparison point with other popular investments options.

https://preview.redd.it/3uss07c8qgb81.png?width=582&format=png&auto=webp&s=3e68ae4c88a82ff35b70538ec11dd137e83447e2

After four years: the S&P 500 is up +78% since January 2018, so the initial $1k investment into crypto on January 1st, 2018 would be worth $1,780 had it been redirected to the S&P. That’s more than double the +34% return of the 2018 Top Ten Crypto Portfolio over the same period of time.

Taking the same invest-$1,000-on-January-1st-of-each-year approach with the S&P 500 that I’ve been documenting through the Top Ten Crypto Experiments, the yields are the following:

  • $1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2018 = $1,780 today
  • $1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2019 = $1,900 today
  • $1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2020 = $1,480 today
  • $1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2021 = $1,270 today

Taken together, here’s the bottom bottom bottom bottom line for a similar approach with the S&P:

After four $1,000 investments into an S&P 500 index fund in January 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021, my portfolio would be worth $6,430 ($1,780 + $1,900 + $1,480 + $1,270)

That is up +61% since January 2018 compared to a +406% gain of the combined Top Ten Crypto Experiment Portfolios.

Here’s a fancy new chart showing the four year ROI comparison between a Top Ten Crypto approach and the S&P as per the rules of the Top Ten Experiments:

https://preview.redd.it/gnkxsud9qgb81.png?width=575&format=png&auto=webp&s=3f94a09a11a36620fca7b8630d615420049141b2

Conclusion:

Many thanks to the long-time Experiment followers, appreciate you taking the time to follow along over the years. For those just getting into crypto, welcome! I hope these reports can somehow give you a taste of what you may be in for as you begin your crypto adventures. Buckle up, think long term, don’t invest what you can’t afford to lose, and try to enjoy the ride! Feel free to reach out with any questions and stay tuned for monthly progress reports. Keep an eye out for my parallel projects where I repeat the experiment, purchasing another $1000 ($100 each) of new sets of Top Ten cryptos as of January 1st, 2019, January 1st, 2020, January 1st, 2021, and most recently, January 1st, 2022.

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