Tracking 2018 Top Ten Cryptocurrencies – Month Forty-Seven

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Month Forty-Seven – UP 67%

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

November highlights for the 2018 Top Ten Portfolio:

• Ethereum and Litecoin are the top monthly performers, most others in the red.
• ETH maintains a solid overall lead, BTC in second place, four coins in the green since January 2018. LTC approaching break even point.
• 2018 Portfolio falls behind S&P 500’s ROI over the same time period.

November Ranking and Dropouts

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

Top Ten dropouts since January 2018: After forty-seven months 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  NEM, Dash, Stellar, Bitcoin Cash, IOTA, and Litecoin have been replaced by Binance Coin, Tether, DOT, SOL, Doge, and USDC.

November Winners and Losers

November Winners –  For the second month in a row ETH (+8.3%) takes the victory, followed very closely by Litecoin, up +8%.

November Losers –  Also for the second month in a row, ADA finished in last place, down -19% in November.

Tally of Monthly Winners and Losers

After forty-seven months, here’s a tally of the monthly winners and losers over the life of the 2018 Top Ten Experiment. 

With 11, Bitcoin has two more monthly wins than second place Cardano.  NEM has finished last place most often (12 months out of 47).

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 –  ETH solidly in first place, Dash worst overall performer, and 2018 Portfolio falls from All Time High.

After reaching an All Time High (+72%) in October, the 2018 Top Ten Portfolio lost a bit of ground.  Only 4 out of the 10 cryptos are in the green: BTC, ETH, ADA, and Stellar.

Overall, first place ETH (+552%) is ahead of BTC (+332%) and third place ADA (+136%).

The initial $100 invested in first place ETH forty-seven months ago?  It’s worth $654 today.

DASH is at the bottom, down over -82% since January 2018  The initial $100 invested forty-seven months ago is worth about $17 today.  

Total Market Cap for the entire cryptocurrency sector:

The total crypto market remained nearly flat in November, falling a mere 4% from last month.  Crypto as a sector is up +444% 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 better than the Experiment’s Top Ten approach (+67%), the return of the S&P (+69%) over the same period of time, and each 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:

BitDom declined 3% in November, ending the month at 40.7%.  When looking at the entire 2018 Experiment time frame, BTC dominance is still 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: 

The 2018 Top Ten Portfolio lost $53 in November.

If I decided to cash out the 2018 Top Ten Experiment today, the $1000 initial investment would be worth $1,666, up 67% from January 2018.  

Green is unfamiliar territory for the 2018 Top Ten Portfolio and a recent development.  Over the first 47 months of the 2018 Index Fund Experiment, thirty-eight months have been in the red, with only nine months of green.  And all nine 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 forty-seven months ago:

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.  How are the other Crypto Index Fund Experiments doing?    

• 2018 Top Ten Experiment: up +67% (total value $1,666)
• 2019 Top Ten Experiment: up +665% (total value $7,645)
• 2020 Top Ten Experiment: up +1016% (total value $11,160)
• 2021 Top Ten Experiment: up +387% (total value $4,866)

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 $25,337 ($1,666 + $7,645 + $11,160 + $4,866).

That’s up +533% on the combined portfolios, a second straight all time high for the Top Ten Index Fund Experiment.  Here’s the combined monthly ROI since I started tracking it in January 2020:

That’s a +533% 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.  

The S&P 500 is up +69% since January 2018, so the initial $1k investment into crypto on January 1st, 2018 would be worth $1690 had it been redirected to the S&P.  That’s a bit better than the +67% return of the Top Ten Crypto Portfolio.

When I combine the four Top Ten Crypto portfolios (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 = $1,690 today
• $1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2019 = $1,800 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 $6,090 ($1,690 + $1,800 + $1,400 + $1,200)

That is up +52% since January 2018 compared to a +533% gain of the combined Top Ten Crypto Experiment Portfolios, a difference of 481 percentage points in favor of crypto.

Here’s a table summarizing the four year ROI comparison between a Top Ten Crypto approach and the S&P as per the rules of the Top Ten Experiments.  

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, and most recently, January 1st, 2021.

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