Tracking 2018 Top Ten Cryptocurrencies – Month Sixty-One

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Month Sixty-One – Down -44%

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

January highlights for the 2018 Top Ten Portfolio:

• The first all green month since July 2022.
• ADA (+55%) has a very good January.
• ETH maintains the overall lead, followed by second place BTC in second place, the only two cryptos in the green since January 2018.

January Ranking and Dropouts

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

Top Ten dropouts since January 2018: sixty-one 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  NEM, Dash, Stellar, Bitcoin Cash, IOTA, and Litecoin have been replaced by Tether, BNB, MATIC, USDC, BUSD, and DOGE.

NEM is the first of the 2018 Top Ten to drop out of the Top 100 and has the distinction of being the lowest ranked crypto of any of the six Experiments.

January Winners and Losers

January Winners – ADA easily won the month (+55%) followed by DASH (+43%).  

January Losers – XRP and Stellar had the “worst” month, +24% and +25% respectively.

Overall Update –   ETH maintains first place, followed by BTC. NEM in last place, slipping out of the Top 100.

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

Overall, first place ETH (+119%) is ahead of the pack, followed by second place BTC (+75%).

The initial $100 invested in first place ETH five years ago?  It’s worth $220 today.

NEM is at the bottom, down -96% since January 2018.  The initial $100 invested in Dash sixty-one months ago is worth $4 today.  

Total Market Cap for the entire cryptocurrency sector:

End of January 2023 market cap: $1,048,821,167,396

In contrast to the performance of the 2018 Top Ten Portfolio, Crypto as a sector is up +82% 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 (-44%).  You would also be significantly outperforming the return of the S&P (+50%) 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:

BitDom ended January at 42.5%.  When considering the more than five 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 $562, -44% from January 2018.  

For context, in sixty-one months since the start of the 2018 Index Fund Experiment, forty-eight 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 5 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, 2022, and 2023 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, 2022, and 2023 Top Tens as well.  How are the other Crypto Index Fund Experiments doing?    

• 2018 Top Ten Experiment: down -44% (total value $562)
• 2019 Top Ten Experiment: up +192% (total value $2,915)
• 2020 Top Ten Experiment: up +354% (total value $4,541) (best performing portfolio)
• 2021 Top Ten Experiment: up +82% (total value $1,822)
• 2022 Top Ten Experiment: down -72% (total value $284) (worst performing portfolio)
• 2023 Top Ten Experiment: up +33% (total value $1,329)

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

After a $6,000 total investment in the 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023 Top Ten Cryptocurrencies, the combined portfolios are worth $11,453. 

That’s up +92% 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 +92% gain by investing $1k in whichever cryptos happened to be in the Top Ten on January 1st (including stablecoins) for six 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 +50% since January 2018, so the initial $1k investment into crypto on January 1st, 2018 would be worth $1,500 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 = $1,500 today
• $1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2019 = $1,600 today
• $1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2020 = $1,240 today
• $1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2021 = $1,070 today
• $1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2022 = $840 today
• $1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2023 = $1,050 today

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

After six $1,000 investments into an S&P 500 index fund in January 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023 my portfolio would be worth $7,300.

That is up +22% since January 2018 compared to a +92% gain of the combined Top Ten Crypto Experiment Portfolios.

The chart below shows the six 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!

A reporting note: I’ll focus on 2023 Top Ten Portfolio reports + one other portfolio on a rotating basis this year, so expect two reports per month.  January’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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