Tracking 2019 Top Ten Cryptocurrencies – Month Twenty-Seven

Month Twenty Seven – UP 474%

Although it fell further behind the top performing 2020 Portfolio, the 2019 Top Ten had an even better March than February, notching its third straight all green month. Tron and EOS were this month’s top performers and the portfolio as a whole increased from +354% to +474%.

March Ranking, Movement Report, and Dropouts

Despite a great month for the 2019 Top Ten Portfolio, only Tron (up four places from #24 to #20) and Tether (up one place from #5 to #4) managed to rise in rank.

The rest of the field either stayed put or lost ground in the rankings:

LTC – down one place (#8→#9)
BCH – down three places (#11→#14)
EOS – down two places (#22→#24)
BSV – down six places last month, down six places this month (#23→#29)
XLM – down six places, and out of the Top Ten (#10→#16)

Top Ten dropouts since January 2019: After twenty-seven months of the 2019 Top Ten Experiment 50% of the cryptos that started in the Top Ten have dropped out. EOS, Bitcoin Cash, BSV, Stellar, and Tron have been replaced by Binance Coin, Chainlink, Cardano, UNI, and Polkadot.

Thanks to a good month for Tron, BSV and EOS are now the only 2019 Top Ten cryptos that have dropped out of the Top Twenty.

March Winners and Losers

March Winners – Another extremely strong month for Tron (+81%). EOS (+47%) was the second best performer of March.

March Losers – Besides Tether, the worst performer in March was Stellar, with only a +5% gain this month.

Tally of Monthly Winners and Losers

Which crypto holds the most wins or losses over the life of the project? Here’s a snapshot of the winners and losers over the first twenty-seven months of the 2019 Top Ten Experiment:

Tether has the greatest number of monthly victories (7) followed by BTC with five. This tells us 26% of the time (i.e. seven times out of twenty seven months) every crypto in the 2019 Top Ten Portfolio has finished the month in the red, although many of UST’s victories happened in 2019.

Although not the worst performing crypto overall (it’s well in the green, up +146% since January 2019) BSV loses a lot. It is tied with Tether with nine losses apiece (i.e. BitcoinSV has lost a third of the time). BTC and EOS are still the only two cryptos without a monthly loss in the 2019 Top Ten cohort.

Overall Update – BTC maintains lead, 2019 Top Ten is up +474%, all cryptos well in the green.

The top performers of the 2019 Portfolio are some of crypto’s most well known projects: BTC (+1490%), ETH (+1361%), and LTC (+574%).

And that $100 investment into first place Bitcoin on January 1st, 2019? It’s currently worth $1,621.

After twenty seven months 100% of the cryptos in the 2019 Top Ten Portfolio are either flat or in positive territory. Not counting stablecoin Tether, the worst performing crypto is XRP, which is still up +62% in a little over two years. Compare that to the ROI of the S&P (see below).

Although the 2019 Top Ten Portfolio is up +474%, March saw it fall even further behind the Experiment’s top performing Portfolio, the 2020 Top Ten’s +589% gain.

Total Market Cap for the Entire Cryptocurrency Sector:

Although the Top Ten Portfolios are starting to generate a nice ROI, it’s nothing compared to the overall market cap. If you were able to somehow capture the entire cryptocurrency sector since January 2019, your ROI would be +1413%. That’s still a bit behind BTC, but much better than the rest of the cryptos and much better than the Top Ten approach.

After reaching the $1T milestone in February, the total market cap is getting very, very close to $2T. We also have a nice little six month streak of month-ending total market cap record highs going.

Bitcoin Dominance:

April opened with a noticeable dip in BitDom (down to 58.1%), a sign there is more interest and investment in cryptos other than Bitcoin. For context, we’ve seen this before: the table above shows the progression over the last twenty seven months with BTC domination ranging between 50%-70% since the beginning of the 2019 Experiment. For newcomers, Bitcoin Dominance is a helpful figure to keep your eye on: a falling BitDom percentage means Alt Coins (cryptos other than Bitcoin) are on the rise.

Overall return on $1,000 investment since January 1st, 2019:

Very strong March for the 2019 Top Ten Cryptos: the portfolio gained almost $1200. Twenty-seven months later the value of the initial $1000 investment is $5,737, up +474%. That makes five straight months of record returns for the 2019 Portfolio.

Here’s a table summarizing the monthly ROI over the life of the 2019 Top Ten Index Fund experiment:

This is the same portfolio that was up only +6% one year ago.

At +474%, the 2019 Top Ten Portfolio is the second best performing out of the four Experiments. First place is the 2020 group, up +589%. Over the years, it’s been back and forth between the 2019 and 2020 Top Ten Portfolios, but the last couple months have seen the 2020 Top Ten pull farther and farther ahead: it is now holding a 115 percentage point lead over the second place 2019 Portfolio.

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

Speaking of other Top Ten Portfolios, let’s put them all together now:

2018 Top Ten Experiment: up +30% (total value $1,300)
2019 Top Ten Experiment: up +474% (total value $5,737)
2020 Top Ten Experiment: up +589% (total value $6,892)
2021 Top Ten Experiment: up +240% (total value $3,399)

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 $17,328 ($1,300 + $5,737 + $6,892 + $3,399).

That’s up +333% on the combined portfolios, another record high for the Top Ten Index Fund Experiment project.

Here’s a table to help visualize the progress of the combined portfolios:

In summary: That’s an +333% gain by investing $1k on whichever cryptos happened to be in the Top Ten on January 1st for four straight years.

Top Ten Index vs. Top Five Index

Inspired by a suggestion from one of our blog readers, let’s take a look at how the 2019 Top Ten approach would compare to a Top Five Index.

A Top Five 2019 Index would mean investing $200 into BTC, XRP, ETH, BCH, and EOS.

After twenty seven months, a Top Five Index would be worth $7,701, returning 670%. That’s compared to the $5,737 (+474%) of the 2019 Top Ten.

So at this point in the 2019 Experiment, going with the five largest cap cryptos (at the time) would have been the better approach, by far.

Alright, that’s crypto. How does crypto compare to the stock market?

Comparison to S&P 500:

You down with S&P? Well I’m you’re guy: I’m also tracking the S&P 500 as part of the experiments to have a comparison point with traditional markets. Another month, another all time high for the S&P:

Since the S&P 500 Index is up 60% since January 2019, the initial $1k investment I put into crypto a little over two years ago would be worth $1,600 had it been redirected to the S&P 500 in January 2019.

A +60% return in twenty seven months would make most investors very happy and is well above what financial advisors use as a planning figure (about 8%/year). Yet that +60% is over four hundred percentage points behind the return of the 2019 Top Ten Portfolio over the same time period.

But what if I took the same world’s-slowest-dollar-cost-averaging $1,000-per-year-on-January-1st-Crypto-Index-Fund-Experiment approach with the S&P 500? It would yield the following:

$1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2018 = $1500 today
$1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2019 = $1600 today
$1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2020 = $1240 today
$1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2021 = $1070 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 $5,410 ($1,500 + $1,600 + $1,240 + $1,070)

That is up +35% since January 2018 compared to a +333% gain of the combined Top Ten Crypto Experiment Portfolios, a difference of 298% in favor of crypto.

Here’s a table providing an overview of the four year ROI comparison between a Top Ten Crypto approach and the S&P:

The 298% difference is by far the largest gap since I began tracking this metric in early 2020, even with stocks at all time highs.

Conclusion:

That’s a wrap for the 2019 Top Ten report. Another great month for the portfolio and for the Experiments overall. Although the 2019 Top Ten Portfolio is increasingly falling behind the 2020 Top Ten, crypto’s a funny place: things can and do turn on a dime (or satoshi) all the time.

To both old-timers and newcomers: thanks so much for taking the time to read and for supporting the Top Ten Crypto Index Fund Experiments. I hope you find the updates helpful in terms of perspective as you navigate this strange and exciting crypto landscape.

Feel free to reach out with any questions and stay tuned for progress reports. Keep an eye out for my parallel projects tracking the Top Ten cryptos as of January 1st, 2018 (the OG experiment), January 1st, 2020, and most recently, January 1st, 2021.

In the meantime, think long term, don’t invest what you can’t afford to lose, and most importantly, buckle up and enjoy the ride!

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