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Tracking 2018 Top Ten Cryptocurrencies – Month Eighty-Five

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Month Eighty-Five – UP +73%

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:

  • Mostly a red month with only BTC, XRP, and LTC finishing in positive territory.
  • BTC leads overall, with ETH in second place and 50% of the portfolio is now in the green.

January Ranking and Dropouts

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

Top Ten dropouts since January 2018: eighty-five months into the 2018 Top Ten Experiment, only 40% of the cryptos that started in the 2018 Top Ten have remained.   

Dash has fallen out of the Top 100 and NEM is now out of the Top 200.

January Winners and Losers

January Winners – XRP (+26%) performed the best this month followed by Litecoin (+16%).

January Losers – Dash (-15%) fell the most in January followed closely by IOTA (-14%)

Overall Update –   BTC back in first place. NEM and Dash tied for last. 50% are in positive territory.

After 7 years of holding these cryptos, 5 out of the 10 are now in the green, a vast improvement over a few months ago when only 20% were in positive territory.

BTC (+676%) has increased its lead over stagnating second place ETH (+352%) quite a bit in recent months. XRP, ADA, and XLM are well behind the frontrunners but have made significant upward progress and are now in the green column.

The initial $100 invested in first place BTC 7 years ago?  It’s worth $776 today.

NEM and Dash are in a virtual tie at the bottom, both down -97% since January 2018 – the initial $100 invested eighty-five months ago worth about $3 today. 

Total Market Cap for the entire cryptocurrency sector:

In contrast to the performance of the 2018 Top Ten Portfolio, Crypto as a sector is up +509% 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 (+73%).  

You would also be significantly outperforming the return of the S&P (+126%) over the same period of time, and nine of the individual cryptos within the 2018 Top Ten (except for BTC).

Crypto Market Cap Low Point in the 2018 Top Ten Crypto Index Experiment: $114B in January 2019.

The total crypto market cap high point is now.

Bitcoin dominance:

BitDom ended January at 57.9%.  For context, see the chart above and high and low points below:   

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 $1,725, +73% from January 2018.   

The low point was in January 2019 when the 2018 Top Ten Portfolio was down -88%.   

This serves as a good 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, and -25% after three years.

Combining the 2018 – 2025 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, 2023, 2024, and 2025 Top Tens as well.  How are the other Crypto Index Fund Experiments doing?    

So overall? Taking the eight portfolios together:

After a $8,000 total investment in the 2018 – 2025 Top Ten Cryptocurrencies, the combined portfolios are worth $33,855

That’s up +323% on the combined portfolio. The peak for the combined Top Ten Index Fund Experiment Portfolios was November 2021’s all time high of +533%.  

Here’s the combined monthly ROI since I started tracking the metric in January 2020:

In summary: That’s a +323% gain by investing $1k on whichever cryptos happened to be in the Top Ten on January 1st (including stablecoins) for eight straight years.

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 +126% since January 2018, so the initial $1k investment into crypto on January 1st, 2018 would be worth $2,260 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 = $2,260 today
  • $1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2019 = $2,411 today
  • $1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2020 = $1,870 today
  • $1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2021 = $1,608 today
  • $1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2022 = $1,268 today
  • $1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2023 = $1,574 today
  • $1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2024 = $1,266 today
  • $1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2025 = $1,027 today

Taken together, the results for a similar approach with the S&P: 

After eight $1,000 annual investments on January 1st into an S&P 500 index fund from 2018 to 2025 my portfolio would be worth $13,284.

That is up +66% since January 2018 compared to a +323% gain of the combined Top Ten Crypto Experiment Portfolios. 

The visual below shows a comparison on ROI 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 2025 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. For more data, you can check out the latest 2019 Top Ten, 2020 Top Ten, 2021 Top Ten, 2022 Top Ten, 2023 Top Ten, and 2024 Top Ten reports as well.

This article contains affiliate links. If you click on a link in this article, I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.

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