Tracking 2019 Top Ten Cryptocurrencies – Month Thirty-Two

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Month Thirty-Two – UP 585%  

The 2019 Top Ten Crypto Index Fund consists of: BTC, XRP, ETH, BCH, EOS, Stellar, USDT, Litecoin, BSV, and Tron.  

August highlights for the 2019 Top Ten Portfolio: 

• First all green month since March 2021.
• Led by XRP, all cryptos posted double digit gains this month.

August Movement Report, Ranking, and Dropouts

All of the 2019 cryptos either maintained their place or fell in the rankings this month:

Ups: None

Downs:

• BSV – down six places (#40–>#46)
• EOS – down four places (#29–>#33)
• Stellar – down three places (#19–>#22)
• Bitcoin Cash – down two places (#12–>#14)
• Tether – down two places (#3–>#5)
• Litecoin – down one place (#15–>#16)

Top Ten dropouts since January 2019: After thirty-two months, 60% of the cryptos that started in the Top Ten in January 2019  have been knocked out.  EOS, Litecoin, BSV, Stellar, Bitcoin Cash, and Tron have been replaced by Binance Coin, Cardano, DOT, SOL, Doge, and USDC.   

BSV has fallen the furthest so far – it is the only crypto that has dropped out of the Top Forty. 

August Winners and Losers 

August Winners – XRP (+70%) followed by Tron (+51%).

August Losers –  Besides Big T, BSV (+20%) underperformed compared to its 2019 Top Ten peers.

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 thirty-two months of the 2019 Top Ten Experiment:

By a large margin, Tether has the greatest number of monthly victories (9) followed by BTC with five. 

Every crypto has won at least one month since January 2019 and BSV has underperformed its peers 11 out of 32 months (or 34% of the time).

Overall Update –  ETH more than double ROI of 2nd place BTC, all cryptos in positive territory, BSV worst performing

ETH is easily the best performer of this group, up 2,648% as of this report, more than double second place BTC (+1215%) over the same period of time.

The $100 investment into first place ETH on January 1st, 2019 is currently worth $2,821.

After thirty-two months, 100% of the cryptos in the 2019 Top Ten Portfolio are in positive territory. Not counting stablecoin Tether, the worst performing crypto is BSV, which is still up “only” +82%.   

Total Market Cap for the Entire Cryptocurrency Sector:

The total market finished August at $2.2T, picking up about $623B during the month.

The entire cryptocurrency sector is up +1646% since January 2019.  That’s still well behind first place ETH (2,648%) but much better than the rest of the cryptos (including second place Bitcoin’s +1215%) and much better than the Top Ten approach (+585%).

Translation: unless you picked ETH correctly thirty-two months ago, you were better off diversifying. And the Top Ten approach has beaten every individual crypto except BTC and ETH.

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

Crypto Market Cap Low Point in the 2019 Top Ten Crypto Index Experiment: $2.2T in May 2021 and now.

Bitcoin Dominance:

BitDom dropped to 42% in August.  It was at 46.6% just last month.  

For context, here are the high and low points of BTC domination over the life of the 2019 Experiment:

Low Point in the 2019 Top Ten Crypto Index Experiment: 41.9% in June 2021.

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

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

The 2019 Top Ten Cryptos Portfolio gained $1,862 in August.  After thirty-two months the value of the initial $1000 investment is $6,846, up +585%.  

Here’s a table summarizing the monthly ROI over the life of the 2019 Top Ten Index Fund experiment, which provides a pretty good sense of the journey to this point:

Fairly steady upward movements punctuated by massive dips.  During the Zombie Apocalypse, for example, the 2019 Top Ten Portfolio was returning only +6%. 

Although the 2019 Top Ten Portfolio is up an impressive +585%, it is still a distant second place behind the 2020 Top Ten Portfolio which is up +847%.

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 71% (total value $1,708)
• 2019 Top Ten Experiment: up +585% (total value $6,846)
• 2020 Top Ten Experiment: up +847% (total value $9,471)
• 2021 Top Ten Experiment: up +422% (total value $5,224)

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 $23,249 ($1,708 + $6,846 + $9,471 + $5,224).

That’s up +481% on the combined portfolio. Here’s a table to help visualize the progress of the combined portfolios:

In summary: That’s an +481% gain by investing $1k on whichever cryptos happened to be in the Top Ten on January 1st for four straight years.

Comparison to S&P 500:

I’m also tracking the S&P 500 as part of the experiments to have a comparison point with traditional markets.  Yet another all time high for the S&P in August:

Because the S&P 500 Index is up 81% since January 2019, the initial $1k investment I put into crypto thirty-two months ago would be worth $1,810 had it been redirected to the S&P 500 in January 2019. 

Even though an extremely solid return for traditional markets, that +81% return is over five 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 = $1,690 today
• $1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2019 = $1,810 today
• $1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2020 = $1,400 today
• $1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2021 = $1,200 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 $6,100 ($1,690 + $1,810 + $1,400 + $1,200).

That is up +50% since January 2018 compared to a +481% gain of the combined Top Ten Crypto Experiment Portfolios, a difference of over 430 percentage points 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: 

Conclusion:

After a few down months, it looks like crypto is back on track.  How long the current uptrend lasts is anyone’s guess.  If you’re new to crypto, expect the unexpected and be careful out there.

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 the crypto landscape.  Be careful out there and don’t put your mental, physical, or financial health at risk chasing gainz. If crypto is causing you to lose sleep at night, chances are you have too much in crypto: try to think long term, don’t invest what you can’t afford to lose.

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.

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