Tracking 2022 Top Ten Cryptocurrencies – Month Four

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Month Four – Down -24%

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

April highlights for the 2022 Top Ten Portfolio:

• A rough all down month after an all-green March.
• No winners this month. Worst performing AVAX fell nearly -40%. 

April Ranking and Dropouts

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

DOT and AVAX become the first Top Ten casualties, replaced by stablecoins UST and BUSD.

April Winners and Losers

April Winners –  None.  BNB (-14%) fell the least this month.

April Losers –  AVAX (-39%) was the worst performing crypto of the group, followed by SOL (-34%).

Overall Update: Entire portfolio in the red. LUNA in the lead, SOL worst performing

Not counting my USDC sub-experiment (more on that below), LUNA continues to lead the 2022 Portfolio, -5% so far in 2022. 

At the very bottom is SOL, down almost half (-48%) in four months.  The initial $100 invested in SOL four months ago is worth $52 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.

April –  Here’s what I did this month:

• I moved my USDC off of Nexo to the Polygon chain.  This was free, so I received exactly $137.55 in USDC on my Metamask wallet on Polygon (get $25 in BTC after depositing $100 in crypto by using the link above).
• I then traded USDC for UST on 1Inch on Polygon and used the Terra Bridge to transfer the UST to the Terra ecosystem at a cost of about $2.
• I then deposited the UST on Anchor, 19.5% APR.

I gained $2.19 after one month in Anchor.  After bridge and transaction fees, my current total is $136.70.

That’s a -0.6%  monthly loss.  I am now +37% on USDC in four months. Here’s a table of the USD side mission so far this year:

Something to be aware of:  To follow my path out of Nexo to Anchor, you’ll need a small amount of MATIC and UST for transaction fees.

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?

April: Both the TCAP token and the 2022 Top Ten Portfolio fell this month, with TCAP outperforming my homemade index by 3%.

TCAP snapshot on May 1st: 

TCAP fell -19% vs. a -22% dip in the 2022 Top Ten portfolio, so the April monthly victory goes to the TCAP.

Overall: The 2022 Top Ten Portfolio is currently worth $763 which places it ahead of TCAP’s $722 value.  But TCAP has made up some ground this month and is currently within 4% of the lead.  Visual below:

Bitcoin Dominance:

BitDom rebounded a bit this month, ending April at 42.3%. 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 $114 last month, the 2022 Top Ten Portfolio lost $214 in April.  The initial $1000 investment on New Year’s Day 2022 is now worth $762, down -24%.  This places the portfolio at the same level as early February.

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: down -1% (total value $986)
• 2019 Top Ten Experiment: up +368% (total value $4,684)
• 2020 Top Ten Experiment: up +574% (total value $6,735) (best performing portfolio)
• 2021 Top Ten Experiment: up +177% (total value $2,771)
• 2022 Top Ten Experiment: down -24% (total value $762)

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

After five annual $1k investments ($5,000 total) in the 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022 Top Ten Cryptocurrencies, the combined portfolios are worth $15,938.

That’s up +219% on the combined portfolios.  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 for those who do better with visuals:

In summary: That’s a +219% 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 -13% so far in 2022, so the initial $1k investment into crypto on New Year’s Day would be worth $870 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 = $1,550 today
• $1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2019 = $1,650 today
• $1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2020 = $1,280 today
• $1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2021 = $1,100 today
• $1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2022 = $870 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 $6,450.

That is up +29% since January 2018 compared to a +219% 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:

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

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