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

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Month Six – UP 184%

Just like the other Top Ten Crypto Index Funds, the Class of 2021 finished June completely in the red. The total value of the portfolio fell nearly $1k since just last month.

June Movement Report, Ranking, and Dropouts

For such a down month, there wasn’t a ton of movement with this group of cryptos:

Ups:

Bitcoin Cash – up one place (#13–>#12)
Binance Coin – up 1 place (#5–>#4)

Downs:

Cardano – down one place (#4–>#5)
Chainlink – down 3 places (#12–>#15)

Top Ten dropouts since January 2021: Six months into the 2021 Top Ten Experiment, three cryptos have dropped out: Chainlink, Litecoin, and most recently Bitcoin Cash. They have been replaced by UNI, DOGE, and USDC.

June Winners and Losers

June Winners – Besides Tether, Bitcoin outperformed the pack by “only” losing -9% this month.

June Losers – Chainlink had a very rough month, losing -41% of its value in June. Second worst performing was Polkadot, down -36% this month.

Tally of Monthly Winners and Losers

Half a year into the Experiment, here’s where we stand in terms of the 2021 Top Ten Portfolio’s monthly winners and losers:

ADA and BNB tied for the lead with two monthly victories each, UST leads the losses column.

Overall Update – ADA holds on to a slim lead, followed closely by BNB. All cryptos in green, Litecoin worst performing.

After flipping Binance Coin last month, ADA continued to hold on to the slimmist of leads: it is now up +644% vs BNB’s +640%.

The $100 price I paid for ADA six months ago would be worth $744 if I sold today.

Besides Tether, Litecoin is the worst performing cryptocurrency of the 2021 Top Ten Portfolio, up +7% in six months.

Total Market Cap for the Entire Cryptocurrency Sector:

After surpassing the $2 trillion dollar mark just two months ago, the crypto finished June around the $1.37T mark. Although down significantly in the last couple of months, the total market cap is up +78% since the beginning of the year.

You may notice that the Top Ten are returning nearly double the overall crypto market cap. This is a bit of an anomaly: the rest of the Top Ten Experiments are well behind what the overall market has returned in the same time frames. Although the 2021 Top Ten approach has held up quite well compared to the overall market so far, I expect to see it fall behind eventually, like the other experiments.

Bitcoin Dominance:

BitDom bounced in June, up from a 2021 Experiment low last month. It currently sits at 45.3%.

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

The 2021 Portfolio lost $968 in June. Overall, the 2021 Top Ten Portfolio is up +184%, the initial $1000 investment on New Year’s Day 2021 worth $2,840.

Here’s the month by month ROI of the 2021 Top Ten Experiment, to give you a sense of perspective and provide an overview as we go along:

This is the best start, by far, of any of the four Top Ten Crypto Experiments.

Combining the 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021 Top Ten Crypto Portfolios

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

2018 Top Ten Experiment: down -1% (total value $989)
2019 Top Ten Experiment: up +341% (total value $4,414)
2020 Top Ten Experiment: up +469% (total value $5,688)
2021 Top Ten Experiment: up +184% (total value $2,840)

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 $13,931 ($989 + $4,414 + $5,688 + $2,840).

That’s up +248% on the combined portfolio. Two straight down months for the combined portfolios, which is now back the combined value it held in February.

Here’s a table to help visualize the progress of the combined portfolios:

That’s a +248% gain by investing $1k into the cryptos that happened to be in the Top Ten on January 1st, 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021.

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. Yet another all time high in June:

The S&P 500 Index is up 15% in 2021. The initial $1k investment I put into crypto six months ago would be worth $1,150 had it been redirected to the S&P 500.

The 2021 Top Ten Crypto Portfolio is up +184% over the same time period. Half a year in, the initial $1k investment in crypto is now worth $2,840.

That’s a difference of $1,690 on a $1k investment in six months.

What about in the longer term? What if I invested in the S&P 500 the same way I did during the first four years of the Top Ten 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 = $1620 today
$1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2019 = $1720 today
$1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2020 = $1340 today
$1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2021 = $1150 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 $5,830 ($1,620 + $1,720 + $1,340 + $1,150)

That is up +46% since January 2018 compared to a +248% gain of the combined Top Ten Crypto Experiment Portfolios, a difference of 202% in favor of crypto.

To help provide perspective, here’s a quick look at the combined four year ROI for crypto vs. the S&P up to this point.

Conclusion:

Even last month’s savior Cardano couldn’t save the 2021 Top Ten Portfolio from its first all red month of the Experiment. Still, this group of ten cryptos is performing extremely well, up +184% since the beginning of the year, and better than the crypto market overall. What’s next for crypto is anyone’s guess – we’ll find out soon enough if red months become more of a pattern.

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. Keep an eye out for my parallel projects tracking the Top Ten cryptos as of January 1st, 2018 (the OG Experiment), January 1st, 2019, and January 1st, 2020.

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Tracking 2021 Top Ten Cryptocurrencies – Month Six