Tracking 2022 Top Ten Cryptocurrencies – Month Three

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Q1 Report – Down -2%

The 2022 Top Ten Crypto Index Fund Portfolio is BTC, ETH, BNB, Solana, ADA, USDC, XRP, LUNA, DOT, AVAX.  

March highlights for the 2022 Top Ten Portfolio:

• After a rough January, and a mixed February, the 2022 Top Ten Portfolio had an all-green March.
• Solana takes the W this month, +38% in Mach.

March Ranking and Dropouts

Here’s a look at the movement in the ranks three months into the 2022 Top Ten Index Fund Experiment:

Despite some internal shuffling, the players have remained exactly the same.

March Winners and Losers

March Winners – SOL (+38%) nearly doubled the performance of second place ADA, up +22% in March.

March Losers –  I didn’t do much with my USDC this month, up only 0.7%.  BTC and XRP tied for second worst performance in March, both still gaining +6%.

Overall/Q1 Update – 80% of 2022 Top Ten in the red, LUNA with early lead, SOL worst performing

Not counting my USDC sub-experiment (more on that below), LUNA continues to hold the lead so far this year, +22% in 2022.  

The rest of the cryptos are in the red, although BTC, ETH, and XRP are getting close to breaking even.

At the very bottom is SOL, down -21% in Q1.  The initial $100 invested in SOL ninety days ago is worth $79 today.  

Factoring in USDC Gains

New feature this year! – In past Experiment years, I have not included stablecoin gains in the monthly reports. These days, there are many ways to earn ROI using stables alone. I figure this may be especially interesting this year, depending on how the crypto market performs. 

For the 2022 Top Ten Experiment, I am detailing ways to build on the $100 USDC, starting with the most straightforward strategies.  As we go along in the year, I will share increasingly advanced methods to increase USDC. My goal of this little side quest will be to beat the ROI of as many of the non-stablecoin cryptos in the Experiment as possible. A simple task if 2022 ends up being a bear year, a bit more difficult if the crypto market moons.

March –  I was traveling this month, so wasn’t able to do much with my USDC. This month, it stayed in Nexo, earning 8% (I had transferred USDC last month using a promo code which gave me $25 in BTC, which I immediately exchanged to USDC).   

 A 0.7%  monthly gain.  I am now +38% on USDC in three months.

Something to be aware of: There have been complaints that Nexo doesn’t pay the $25 bonus if the value of the crypto you transfer is worth under $100 at the end of 30 days, as per the terms and conditions.  Lucky for us we’re using USDC, so I had no problem losing value or with the bonus. 

2022 Top Ten Portfolio vs. Total Crypto Market Cap Token (TCAP)

Another new feature this year! – The first Top Ten Crypto Experiment was started on 1 January 2018 in an attempt to capture the gains of the entire market. Much has changed in the last four+ years, including innovative Decentralized Finance (DeFi) projects that have created index tokens to capture segments of the crypto market (DeFi, the Metaverse, Blue Chips, etc.) instead of manually buying coins and tokens, like I do for my Experiments.

A project of particular interest to the Top Ten Experiments is the Total Crypto Market Cap (TCAP) token, created by Cryptex, which tracks the entire crypto market – exactly what my Top Ten Portfolios have been trying to recreate from the start.

I thought it would be interesting to compare my homemade 2022 Top Ten Crypto Index Fund Experiment to TCAP for a bit of a friendly competition. 

Here’s the question I’ll be tracking this year: would I have been better off with $1,000 of TCAP instead of going through the effort of creating a homemade $1,000 Top Ten Index Fund?

March: Both the TCAP token and the 2022 Top Ten Portfolio gained in value this month, but the market gains appear to have been concentrated in the Top Ten, which gained +13% in March. TCAP finished the month up +0.5%

The March monthly victory goes to the 2022 Top Top Portfolio.

Overall: The 2022 Top Ten Portfolio has pulled ahead of TCAP.  Visual below:

Bitcoin Dominance:

BitDom dropped more than two percentage points this month, ending March at 41%. For context, there hasn’t been much movement on this metric so far in 2022. Chart below:

For those just getting into crypto, it’s worth paying attention to the Bitcoin dominance figure, as it signals the appetite for altcoins vs. BTC.

Overall return on $1,000 investment since January 1st, 2022:

After gaining $100 last month,the 2022 Top Ten Portfolio gained another $114 in March.  The initial $1000 investment on New Year’s Day 2022 is now worth $976, down -2% and approaching the break even point. 

Here’s a visual summary of the progress so far:

The 2022 Top Ten Cryptos are still the worst performing of the five Portfolios.

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

So, where do we stand if we combine five years of the Top Ten Crypto Index Fund Experiments?

• 2018 Top Ten Experiment: up +25% (total value $1,250)
• 2019 Top Ten Experiment: up +470% (total value $5,695)
• 2020 Top Ten Experiment: up +716% (total value $8,163) (best performing portfolio)
• 2021 Top Ten Experiment: up +252% (total value $3,522)
• 2022 Top Ten Experiment: down -2% (total value $976)

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

After a $5,000 investment in the 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022 Top Ten Cryptocurrencies, the combined portfolios are worth $19,606.

That’s up +292% on the combined portfolios, well up from last month, but down from November 2021’s all time high of +533% for the combined Top Ten Index Fund Experiment Portfolios.  Here’s the combined monthly ROI since I started tracking the metric in January 2020 for those who do better with visuals:

In summary: That’s a +292% gain by investing $1k on whichever cryptos happened to be in the Top Ten on January 1st (including stablecoins) for five 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 is down -5% so far in 2022, so the initial $1k investment into crypto on New Year’s Day would be worth $950 had it been redirected to the S&P.  

Taking the same invest-$1,000-on-February-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 = $1,700 today
• $1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2019 = $1,810 today
• $1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2020 = $1,410 today
• $1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2021 = $1,210 today
• $1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2022 = $950 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 $7,080.

That is up +42% since January 2018 compared to a +292% gain of the combined Top Ten Crypto Experiment Portfolios.

Here’s a fancy new chart showing a combined ROI comparison between a Top Ten Crypto approach and the S&P as per the rules of the Top Ten Experiments: 

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!  

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 from me per month.  March’s extended report is on the 2020 Top Ten Portfolio, which you can access here.  You can check out the latest 2018 Top Ten (the OG Experiment), 2019 Top Ten, and 2021 Top Ten reports as well.

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