Saturday, June 13, 2020

Repeated Experiment: I bought $1k of Top10 Cryptos on 01/01/2019. Result? UP +43%

EXPERIMENT - Tracking 2019 Top Ten Cryptocurrencies – Month Seventeen - UP 43%

Full blog post with all the tables here.

tl;dr - This is the 17th monthly update on the 2019 Top Ten Experiment. Ethereum up the most in May, plus got a shout out from J.K. Rowling, so it obviously won the month. Overall, BTC in first place since January 2019, BSV in second place. Half of the 2019 Top Ten Portfolio is up at least +50%. XRP is worst performing. Total $3k (3 x $1k) investments the 2018, 2019, and 2020 Top Ten are up +3.5%, but similar approach with US stocks market would have yielded +10%.

The Experiment:

Instead of hypothetically tracking cryptos, I made an actual $1000 investment, $100 in each of the Top 10 cryptocurrencies by market cap on the 1st of January 2018. The result? The 2018 Top Ten portfolio ended 2018 down 85%, my $1000 worth only $150. I then repeated the experiment on the 1st of January 2019 with the new 2019 Top Ten cryptos, then again in 2020.

Think of the Top Ten Experiments as a lazy man’s Index Fund (no weighting or rebalancing), less technical, but hopefully still a proxy for the market as a whole – or at the very least an interesting snapshot of the 2018, 2019, and 2020 crypto space. I am trying to keep this project simple and accessible for beginners and those looking to get into crypto but maybe not quite ready to jump in yet. I try not to take sides or analyze, but rather attempt to report in a detached manner letting the numbers speak for themselves.

This is not investing advice – as a matter of fact, the vast majority of the reports will show that the Top Ten approach under performs other strategies. This experiment is designed to be documentary in nature, describing a specific period in cryptocurrency history.

The Rules:

Buy $100 of each the Top 10 cryptocurrencies on January 1st, 2018, 2019, and 2020. Hold only. No selling. No trading. Report monthly.

Month Seventeen – UP 43%

Unlike April’s all green month, May was more mixed. That said, the gains outweighed the losses this month in the 2019 Top Ten Portfolio.

Question of the month:

In May, Reddit launched two Ethereum-based tokens on the r/Cryptocurrency and r/FortNiteBR subreddits. What are the r/Cryptocurrency token called?

A) Moons

B) Bricks

C) Satoshis

D) Cryptos

Scroll down for the answer.

Ranking and March Winners and Losers

Besides Stellar (down two spots to #13) and Tron (down one from #16 to #17) every other crypto was locked in place.

Speaking of Stellar and Tron, they are still the only two cryptos to have dropped out of the 2019 Top Ten since January 1st, 2019. They have been replaced by Binance Coin and Tezos.

May Winners – Ethereum ended the month up +16% and got a shout out from J.K. Rowling, so it obviously won May. BTC came in a close second this month, up +14%.

May Losers – A tight battle for the basement this month with BSV (down -3.9%) edging out XRP (down -3.7%) for the bottom spot.

For ~~nerds~~ those keeping score, here is tally of which coins have the most monthly wins and loses during the first seventeen months of the 2019 Top Ten Experiment: Tether is still in the lead with five monthly victories followed by BSV in second place with three. BSV also holds the most monthly losses, finishing last in six out of seventeen months.

Overall update – BTC increases lead over second place BSV, XRP still worst performing

Ahead until just last month, BSV lost a lot of ground to BTC in May. Bitcoin is now up +168% since January 2019 compared to BSV‘s +116% gain. That initial $100 investment in BTC? Now worth $273.

As was the case last month, 50% of the 2019 Top Ten cryptos are up at least +50% since the beginning of the experiment.

At the other end, XRP continues to struggle, now down -41% since January 2019.

Total Market Cap for the entire cryptocurrency sector:

The overall crypto market added about $35B in May, and is now near August 2019 levels. It is up +123% since January 2019.

Bitcoin dominance:

BitDom was steady again in May. This marks the third straight month it’s been stuck at around 65% For context, the range since the beginning of the experiment in January 2019 has been between 50%-70%.

Overall return on investment since January 1st, 2019:

The 2019 Top Ten Portfolio gained about $65 in May. After the initial $1000 investment, the 2019 group of cryptos is worth $1,431, up about +43%.

Here’s a look at the ROI over the life of the first seventeen months of the experiment, month by month:

Almost completely green for the 2019 Top Ten, a welcome change from the all red table you’ll see in the 2018 experiment. As you can see, every month except the first month ends in positive territory. At the lowest point, the 2019 Top Ten portfolio was down -9%, at the highest point, up +114% (May 2019).

How does the 2019 Top Ten Experiment compare to the parallel projects?

2018 Top Ten Experiment: down about -79% (total value on $1k investment: $205)
2020 Top Ten Experiment: up about +47% (total value on $1k investment: $1,467)

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

After a $3000 investment in the 2018, 2019, and 2020 Top Ten Cryptocurrencies, my portfolios are worth $3,104‬.

That’s up about +3.5% for the combined portfolios. Better than a few months ago (aka the zombie apocalypse) where it was down -24%, but not yet back at January (+13%) or February (+6%) levels.

How does this compare to traditional markets?

How does the 2019 Top Ten portfolio compare US stock market?

Excellent question, I’m glad you asked. And you’re in luck, I’m also tracking the S&P 500 as part of my experiment to have a comparison point with other popular investments options. Despite the fact that the world seemed to be on fire, May 2020 saw the continued rebound of the stock market. It’s now up +22% since the start of the 2019 Experiment.

As a reminder (or just scroll up) the 2019 Top Ten portfolio is returning +43% over the same time period, which is about double the S&P 500.

The initial $1k investment I put into crypto would be worth $1,220 had it been redirected to the S&P 500 in January 2019.

But what if I took the same world’s-slowest-dollar-cost-averaging/$1,000-per-year-in-January approach with the S&P 500? It would yield the following:

$1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2018: +$140
$1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2019: +$220
$1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2020: -$50

Taken together, here’s the bottom bottom bottom line for a similar approach with the S&P:

After three $1,000 investments into an S&P 500 index fund in January 2018, 2019, and 2020, my portfolio would be worth $3,310.

That $3,310 is up over+10% since January 2018, compared to the $3,104 value (+3.5%) of the combined Top Ten Crypto Experiment Portfolios.

That’s about a 7% difference in favor of the stock market. Last month, there was only a 3% difference, the month before, the gap was 13% (all in favor of the stock market).

Implications/Observations:

The difference between the 2019 Top Ten crypto group and the overall crypto market is stark. Since January 2019, the overall market has gained +123% compared to the 2019 Top Ten crypto group which has gained +43%. This is an absolutely massive 80% gap. A +43% return is solid compared to the stock market, but it also implies that an investor would have done much better picking different cryptos or investing in the entire market instead of focusing only on the Top Ten. There are a few examples of this approach outperforming the overall market in this 2019 Top Ten Crypto Experiment, but the cases are few and far between.

The 2018 Top Ten portfolio, on the other hand, has never outperformed the overall market, at least not in the first twenty-nine months of that Experiment.

For the most recent 2020 Top Ten group, the opposite had been true: the 2020 Top Ten had easily outperformed the overall market 100% of the time…until this month.

Conclusion:

The BTC halving event came and went in May and crypto markets shrugged. As the world continues to change because of COVID-19, what will be crypto’s place when we finally emerge on the other side?

Final word: Please take care of yourselves, your families, and your communities. Stay safe out there.

Thanks for reading and for supporting the experiment. I hope you’ve found it helpful. I continue to be committed to seeing this process through and reporting along the way. Feel free to reach out with any questions and stay tuned for progress reports. Keep an eye out for the original 2018 Top Ten Crypto Index Fund Experiment and the recently launched 2020 Top Ten Experiment.

And the Answer is…