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!
Month Three – Down -22%
The 2025 Top Ten Crypto Index Fund Portfolio is BTC, ETH, XRP, BNB, SOL, DOGE, USDC, ADA, Tron, AVAX.
March highlights for the 2025 Top Ten Portfolio:
- Mostly red month – ADA and Tron only cryptos to finish March modestly up
- Q1 ends with zero cryptos in positive YTD territory
- XRP maintains overall lead
March Ranking
Here’s a look at the movement in the ranks one month into the 2025 Top Ten Index Fund Experiment:
Besides the quickly dropping AVAX, all coins remain in the Top Ten.
March Winners and Losers
March Winners – ADA and Tron, up +1% and +2% respectively. Second straight monthly victory for Tron.
March Losers – DOGE (-17%) and ETH (-15%) underperformed their peers in March. Second straight monthly loss for such DOGE, much wow.
Overall Update: XRP maintains lead but slips into negative territory; after Q1 portfolio -22%.
After a fairly good start (the portfolio was +7% in January) the 2025 Top Ten Portfolio ends Q1 down -22%.
Year to date XRP (-3%) maintains a small lead over second place Tron (-8%), which is followed by third place BTC (-9%). The initial $100 invested in first place XRP three months ago is worth $97 today.
Overall return on $1,000 investment since January 1st, 2025:
The 2025 Top Ten Portfolio stabilized a bit, dropping only $40 month to month – nowhere near as bad as the $250 loss in February. The initial $1000 investment on New Year’s Day 2025 is now worth $776.
Here’s a visual summary of year one of the 2025 Top Ten portfolio:
2025 Top Ten Portfolio vs. Coinbase’s COIN50
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 over the last 7+ years, including the introduction of index products designed to capture the entire crypto market (instead of manually buying coins and tokens like I do for my Experiments).
This year’s friendly competition is between The 2025 Top Ten Portfolio and the Coinbase 50 Index (COIN50). COIN50 tracks the performance of the 50 largest digital assets by market cap, rebalanced quarterly.
On 1 January 2025, COIN50 was valued at $450.54. Here’s the snapshot, three months later:
March Performances:
- The 2025 Top Ten Portfolio: -5%
- COIN50: -6%
The March monthly victory goes to: The 2025 Top Ten Portfolio
Overall since January 1st, 2025:
- The 2025 Top Ten Portfolio: -22%
- COIN50: -26%
Overall lead: The 2025 Top Ten Portfolio
For the more visual, here’s the table I’ll be using to track the friendly Top Ten vs. COIN50 competition this year:
Combining the 2018 – 2025 Top Ten Crypto Portfolios
The 2025 Top Ten is one of eight concurrent experimental portfolios. So, where do we stand if we combine eight years of the Top Ten Crypto Index Fund Experiments?
- 2018 Top Ten Experiment: up +25% (total value $1,249)
- 2019 Top Ten Experiment: up +542% (total value $6,420)
- 2020 Top Ten Experiment: up +766% (total value $8,655) (best performing portfolio)
- 2021 Top Ten Experiment: up +280% (total value $3,798)
- 2022 Top Ten Experiment: down -25% (total value $753) (worst performing portfolio)
- 2023 Top Ten Experiment: up +142% (total value $2,422)
- 2024 Top Ten Experiment: up +38% (total value $1,384)
- 2025 Top Ten Experiment: down -22% (total value $776)
Taking the eight portfolios together:
After a $8,000 total investment in the 2018 – 2025 Top Ten Cryptocurrencies, the combined portfolios are worth $26,959
That’s up +218% 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 +218% 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 down -4% so far in 2025, so the initial $1k investment into crypto on New Year’s Day would be worth $958 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 = $2,107 today
- $1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2019 = $2,248 today
- $1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2020 = $1,744 today
- $1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2021 = $1,500 today
- $1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2022 = $1,182 today
- $1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2023 = $1,467 today
- $1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2024 = $1,181 today
- $1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2025 = $958 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 $12,387.
That is up +55% since January 2018 compared to a +218% 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 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, take care of your family, yourselves, and 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. March’s extended report is on the 2020 Top Ten Portfolio. For more data, you can check out the latest 2018 Top Ten, 2019 Top Ten, 2021 Top Ten, 2022 Top Ten, 2023 Top Ten, and 2024 Top Ten reports as well.
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