Tracking 2018 Top Ten Cryptocurrencies – Month Fifty-Seven

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Month Fifty-Seven – Down -50%

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

September highlights for the 2018 Top Ten Portfolio:

• Mixed month – ETH fell (-15%) but Stellar (+16%) and XRP (+46%) did very well.
• ETH maintains the overall lead, with BTC in second place.  Only these two cryptos are in the green since January 2018.
• The 2018 Portfolio drops to -50%.

September Ranking and Dropouts

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

Top Ten dropouts since January 2018: fifty-seven months into the 2018 Top Ten Experiment, only 40% of the cryptos that started in the 2018 Top Ten have remained.  NEM, Dash, Stellar, Bitcoin Cash, IOTA, and Litecoin have been replaced by Tether, BNB, SOL, USDC, BUSD, and DOGE.

Although some of these older cryptos have held their positions fairly well despite the recent downturn, NEM still looks like it might be the first of the 2018 Top Ten to drop out of the Top 100. 

NEM has the distinction of being the lowest ranked crypto of any of the five Experiments.

September Winners and Losers

September Winners – XRP easily won the month (+46%) followed by Stellar (+16%).  

September Losers – ETH was the worst performing of the group, dropping -15% this month.

Overall Update – ETH maintains first place, followed by BTC. Dash in last place. Portfolio gives up gains of last few months

After reaching an All Time High (+72%) in October 2021, the 2018 Top Ten Portfolio has steadily continued to lose value.  Currently, it is down -50%, giving up the gains of the last few months.

After over four and a half years of holding these cryptos, only 2 out of the 10 cryptos are in the green: BTC and ETH.

Overall, first place ETH (+84%) is ahead of second place BTC (+47%) by nearly double.

The initial $100 invested in first place ETH four and a half years ago?  It’s worth $184 today.

Dash is at the bottom, down nearly -96% since January 2018.  The initial $100 invested in Dash fifty-seven months ago is worth about $4 today.  

Total Market Cap for the entire cryptocurrency sector:

End of September 2022 market cap: $940,019,217,285

Crypto as a sector is up +63% 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 (-50%).  You also would nearly doubled the return of the S&P (+34%) over the same period of time, and nine of the individual cryptos within the 2018 Top Ten, including Bitcoin (all 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 ended September at 39.4%.  When considering the more than four and a half 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: 

If I decided to cash out the 2018 Top Ten Experiment today, the $1000 initial investment would be worth $501, -50% from January 2018.  

For context, in fifty-seven months since the start of the 2018 Index Fund Experiment, forty-four months have been in the red, with only thirteen months of green, all which occurred in 2021/22. 

Here’s a look at the ROI over the life of the experiment, month by month, since the beginning of the 2018 Experiment over 4.5 over years 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%.   

A reminder: 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, 2021, and 2022 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 into each of the 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022 Top Tens as well.  How are the other Crypto Index Fund Experiments doing?    

• 2018 Top Ten Experiment: down -50% (total value $501)
• 2019 Top Ten Experiment: up +153% (total value $2,532)
• 2020 Top Ten Experiment: up +307% (total value $4,073) (best performing portfolio)
• 2021 Top Ten Experiment: up +74% (total value $1,735)
• 2022 Top Ten Experiment: down -72% (total value $281) (worst performing portfolio)

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

After a $5,000 total investment in the 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022 Top Ten Cryptocurrencies, the combined portfolios are worth $9,122. 

That’s up +82% on the combined portfolios, down from November’s all time high of +553%. Here’s the combined monthly ROI since I started tracking the metric in January 2020:

That’s a +82% gain by investing $1k in whichever cryptos happened to be in the Top Ten on January 1st (including stablecoins) for five 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 +34% since January 2018, so the initial $1k investment into crypto on January 1st, 2018 would be worth $1,340 had it been redirected to the S&P.  

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 = $1,340 today
• $1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2019 = $1,430 today
• $1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2020 = $1,110 today
• $1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2021 = $950 today
• $1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2022 = $750 today

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

After five $1,000 investments into an S&P 500 index fund in January 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022 my portfolio would be worth $5,580.

That is up +12% since January 2018 compared to a +82% 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: 

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 September 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!

A reporting note: I’ll focus on 2022 Top Ten Portfolio reports + one other portfolio on a rotating basis this year, so expect only two reports per month.  September’s extended report is on the 2018 Top Ten Portfolio (the OG Experiment), which you’re reading now. You can check out the latest  2019 Top Ten, 2020 Top Ten, 2021 Top Ten, and 2022 Top Ten reports as well.

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