Ways to pick up free Bitcoin:
Method #1: Open an Uphold wallet using this link. Buy or sell $250 in crypto in the first 30 days, get $20 in free BTC.
Method #2: Sign up for Nexo using this link. Top up your account with $500 in crypto and complete a few tasks. Make sure your assets are still worth $500 in 30 days and you will receive $35 in free BTC.
Method #3: Open a Coinbase account using this link. Buy $20 in crypto, get $20 in free BTC.
Happy HODLING!
MMonth Forty-One – Down -15%
The 2022 Top Ten Crypto Index Fund Portfolio is BTC, ETH, BNB, Solana, ADA, USDC/UST, XRP, LUNA/LUNC, DOT, AVAX.
May highlights for the 2022 Top Ten Portfolio:
- Mostly red month with strong performances from ETH, BTC and BNB
- Overall: XRP solidly in first place with BTC in second
- Nearly 3.5 years into the Experiment, most coins haven’t reached their break even point.
- The 2022 Top Ten Portfolio is the worst performing of the eight Top Ten experiments, -15% as a whole.
May Ranking and Dropouts
Here’s a look at the movement in ranking forty-one months into the 2022 Top Ten Index Fund Experiment:
With a few notable exceptions, there has been remarkably little movement in rank after nearly three and a half years.
May Winners and Losers
May Winners – ETH (+36%) has its best month in quite a while. BTC (+9%) and BNB (+10%) had a solid May as well.
May Losers – The Terra Ecosystem coins continue to show that there’s always room to fall.
Overall Update: XRP passes BTC. Only BTC, XRP, and BNB are in positive territory. LUNC worst performing in the 2022 Portfolio and worst performing crypto of all the Top Ten Experiments.
XRP (+157%) has put a bit of distance between itself and second place BTC (124%) for the overall lead. BNB is third place at +28% since January 2022.
Ever since LUNC’s (then known as LUNA) crash in May of 2022, it has remained hopelessly at the bottom, worth a fraction of a cent. The initial $100 invested in Luna forty-one months ago is worth $0.0001 today – the worst performance of any coin in any of the eight Top Ten Experiments, by far. It’s hard to remember/believe that LUNA was the highest performing Top Ten Crypto of the first quarter of 2022, before the crash.
Additionally, at -15%, the 2022 Top Ten Portfolio is the worst performing of the eight Top Ten Experiments (although the Class of 2025 isn’t far behind at -13%).
Overall return on $1,000 investment since January 1st, 2022:
Overall, the 2022 Top Ten Portfolio is down -15%. The initial $1000 investment on New Year’s Day 2022 is now worth $851.
A note on USDC/UST
In retrospect this was not my best idea: I was a bit bored of simply holding a stablecoin in the Top Ten as I’ve been doing since 2019 and thought I’d showcase some of the possibilities available in crypto to build on stablecoin holdings. My plan was to start nice and easy with trusted CeFi platforms, taking advantage of sign up bonuses, then move to more advanced DeFi strategies. As fate would have it, I decided to showcase the TerraLuna chain converting my USDC to UST and then staking with Anchor.
It was all going pretty well until May 2022. Then the LUNA implosion happened. My UST is now worth $1.18, down -98%.
It’s a good reminder that anything can and does happen in crypto and we should all continue to be careful. I’m thankful that the lesson only cost me $100: I know a lot of other people got hit much, much harder.
Total Crypto Market:
The entire market has done much better than my Top Ten portfolio, +49% since January 2022:
Bitcoin Dominance:
BitDom ended May at 63.6% and has slowly but steadily been rising since late 2022. Chart below:
Combining the 2018 – 2025 Top Ten Crypto Portfolios
The 2022 Top Ten is one of eight concurrent experimental portfolios. Where do we stand if we combine eight years of the Top Ten Crypto Index Fund Experiments?
- 2018 Top Ten Experiment: up +50% (total value $1,500)
- 2019 Top Ten Experiment: up +671% (total value $7,705)
- 2020 Top Ten Experiment: up +890% (total value $9,898) (best performing portfolio)
- 2021 Top Ten Experiment: up +315% (total value $4,153)
- 2022 Top Ten Experiment: down -15% (total value $851) (worst performing portfolio)
- 2023 Top Ten Experiment: up +168% (total value $2,676)
- 2024 Top Ten Experiment: up +54% (total value $1,535)
- 2025 Top Ten Experiment: down -13% (total value $867)
Taking the eight portfolios together:
After a $8,000 total investment in the 2018 – 2025 Top Ten Cryptocurrencies, the combined portfolios are worth $29,186.
That’s up +265% 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 for those who do better with visuals:
In summary: That’s a +265% 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 my Experiment to have a comparison point to traditional markets.
The S&P 500 is up +24% since January 2022, so the initial $1k investment into crypto on New Year’s Day would be worth $1,240 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 = $2,212 today
- $1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2019 = $2,359 today
- $1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2020 = $1,830 today
- $1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2021 = $1,574 today
- $1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2022 = $1,240 today
- $1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2023 = $1,540 today
- $1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2024 = $1,239 today
- $1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2025 = $1,005 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 $13,000.
That is up +63% since January 2018 compared to a +265% 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:
As the last section demonstrates, if you can stomach crypto’s volatility (a big if) over the past few years, you’ll find better overall returns in crypto vs. traditional markets – at least at this point in the Experiments.
To the long time followers of the Top Ten Experiments, thank you 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, and truly don’t invest what you can’t afford to lose. Most importantly, 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. May’s extended report is the one you’re reading now, the 2022 Top Ten Portfolio. For more data, you can check out the latest Top Ten reports from years 2018-2025 as well.
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