Tracking 2021 Top Ten Cryptocurrencies – Month Forty-Five - Top Ten Crypto Index Fund Experiments

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Month Forty-Five – UP 196%

The 2021 Top Ten Crypto Index Fund consists of: BTC, ETH, USDT, XRP, Litecoin, DOT, BCH, ADA, BNB, and LINK.

September highlights for the 2021 Top Ten Portfolio:

LINK and ADA turned in the strongest performances this month

BNB is still way out in front overall, followed very distantly by ETH.
2021 Top Ten Portfolio is up +196% in forty-five months

September Ranking and Dropout Report

Top Ten dropouts since January 2021: forty-five months into the 2021 Top Ten Experiment, five cryptos have dropped out: Chainlink, Cardano, Litecoin, Polkadot and Bitcoin Cash.

September Winners and Losers

September Winners – LINK (+17%) and ADA (+16%) performed the best in September

September Losers – LTC turned in the worst performance, but still gained +7% this month.

Overall Update – BNB dominates, ETH in distant second place, 70% of cryptos in green, DOT worst performing

As has been the case for most of the 2021 Top Ten Experiment, BNB remains the dominant crypto in the portfolio, by far. It is up +1399%, the $100 investment into BNB forty-five months ago now worth $1503. ETH is in distant second place, up +256% followed by XRP in third place and BTC in fourth place.

At the bottom, DOT is the worst performing of the 2021 Top Ten Portfolio cryptos at this point in the Experiment, down -48% since January 2021.

Bitcoin Dominance:

BitDom has bounced a bit since the beginning of the year, now sitting at 55.8% and is generally on an uptrend since early 2023.

Overall return on $1,000 investment since January 1st, 2021:

Overall, the 2021 Top Ten Portfolio is up +196%. The initial $1000 investment forty-five months ago, on New Year’s Day, 2021, is worth $2,962.

Combining the 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024 Top Ten Crypto Portfolios

As most readers are aware, this is the sixth year of an Experiment I started back in January of 2018, at the height of a crypto bull run. Where do we stand if we combine seven years of the Top Ten Crypto Index Fund Experiments?

2018 Top Ten Experiment: up +2% (total value $1,021)
2019 Top Ten Experiment: up +440% (total value $5,401)
2020 Top Ten Experiment: up +697% (total value $7,967) (best performing portfolio)
2021 Top Ten Experiment: up +196% (total value $2,962)
2022 Top Ten Experiment: down -44% (total value $558) (worst performing portfolio)
2023 Top Ten Experiment: up +71% (total value $1,714)
2024 Top Ten Experiment: up +8% (total value $1,080)

Taking the seven portfolios together:

After a $7,000 total investment in the 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024 Top Ten Cryptocurrencies, the combined portfolios are worth $20,703

That’s up +196% 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 +196% gain by investing $1k on whichever cryptos happened to be in the Top Ten on January 1st (including stablecoins) for seven straight years.

Comparison to S&P 500

I’m also tracking the S&P 500 as part of my experiment to have a comparison point to traditional markets.

The S&P 500 Index is up +52% since January 1st, 2021. The initial $1k investment I put into crypto forty-five months ago would be worth $1,520 had it been redirected to the S&P 500.

The 2021 Top Ten Crypto Portfolio is up +196% over the same time period – the initial $1k investment in crypto forty-five months ago is now worth $2,962.

That’s a difference of $1,442 on a $1k investment in forty-five months.

What about in the longer term? What if I invested in the S&P 500 the same way I did during the first seven years of the Top Top Crypto Index Fund Experiments? What I like to call the world’s slowest dollar cost averaging method? Here are the figures:

$1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2018 = $2,136 today
$1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2019 = $2,278 today
$1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2020 = $1,767 today
$1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2021 = $1,520 today
$1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2022 = $1,198 today
$1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2023 = $1,487 today
$1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2024 = $1,197 today

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

After seven $1,000 investments into an S&P 500 index fund in January 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024 my portfolio would be worth $11,460.

That is up +65% since January 2018 compared to a +196% gain of the combined Top Ten Crypto Experiment Portfolios.

To help provide perspective, here’s a chart showing the combined seven year ROI for the Crypto Top Ten Experiment vs. the S&P up to this point:

Conclusion:

To the long time followers of the Top Ten Experiments, thank you so much for sticking around so long. For those just getting into crypto, I hope these reports will help prepare you for the highs and lows that await on your crypto adventures. Buckle up, go with the flow, think long term, don’t invest what you can’t afford to lose, and most importantly, try to enjoy the ride.

Feel free to reach out with any questions and stay tuned for progress reports. A reporting note: I’ll focus on 2024 Top Ten Portfolio reports + one other portfolio on a rotating basis this year, so expect two reports per month. September’s extended report is the one you’re reading now (the 2021 Top Ten Portfolio). You can check out the latest 2018 Top Ten (the OG Experiment), 2019 Top Ten, 2020 Top Ten, 2022 Top Ten, and 2023 Top Ten reports as well.

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Tracking 2021 Top Ten Cryptocurrencies – Month Forty-Five