I bought $1k of the Top 10 Cryptos on January 1st, 2025 (FEB Update/Month 2/-18%)

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I bought $1k of the Top 10 Cryptos on January 1st, 2025 (FEB Update/Month 2/-18%)

I bought $1k of the Top 10 Cryptos on January 1st, 2025 (FEB Update/Month 2/-18%)

EXPERIMENT – Tracking 2025 Top Ten Cryptocurrencies – Month Two – Down -18%

Find the full blog post with all the tables and graphs here.

Welcome to your monthly no-shill data dump: Here's the report for the SECOND month of the 2025 Top Ten Experiment featuring BTC, ETH, XRP, BNB, SOL, DOGE, USDC, ADA, Tron, and AVAX.

SNAPSHOTS ALWAYS TAKEN ON FIRST OF THE MONTH (data below reflects 1 MAR Snapshot).

tl;dr

  • What's this all about? I purchased $100 of each of Top 10 Cryptos in Jan. 2018, haven't sold or traded, reporting monthly for 7+ years for your reading pleasure. Did the same annually in 2019 – 2025. Learn more about the history and rules of the Experiments (including why in the world I would include stablecoins) here.
  • FEB Highlights: Bloody month, all coins in the red. YTD XRP is in the lead and the only crypto in positive territory.
  • DCA'ing once a year into Top Ten Cryptos for the last 7 years has produced better returns than if you'd done the same with the S&P 500 over the same time period (+237% vs S&P500's +64% – see below for details).

Month Two – Down -18%

https://preview.redd.it/krbogpex1uqe1.png?width=815&format=png&auto=webp&s=62a09c5bab9e51dd4a091cc97943e49d3f4a6546

The 2025 Top Ten Crypto Index Fund Portfolio is BTC, ETH, XRP, BNB, SOL, DOGE, USDC, ADA, Tron, AVAX.

February highlights for the 2025 Top Ten Portfolio:

  • All red month with BNB and Tron falling the least
  • AVAX drops well out of the Top Ten
  • XRP in overall lead and only crypto in positive territory

February Ranking

Here’s a look at the movement in the ranks one month into the 2025 Top Ten Index Fund Experiment:

https://preview.redd.it/1xxa4o822uqe1.png?width=242&format=png&auto=webp&s=dffae3797b18e3f425b4a85e30c371feab562daf

Besides the quickly dropping AVAX, all coins remain in the Top Ten.

February Winners and Losers

February Winners – None, although BNB and Tron fall the least, both -9% in February.

February LosersSOL and DOGE (both -37%) underperformed their peers this month.

Overall Update: XRP maintains lead and is the only crypto in positive territory; after two months, portfolio -18%.

After a fairly good start to 2025 (the portfolio was +7% in January) the latest Top Ten Portfolio is down -18%.

Year to date XRP (+3%) maintains a healthy lead over second place BTC (-8%) followed by third place Tron (-10%). The initial $100 invested in first place XRP two months ago is worth $103 today.

Overall return on $1,000 investment since January 1st, 2025:

https://preview.redd.it/bwnfr6w52uqe1.png?width=253&format=png&auto=webp&s=0dc4502ac4f83213e8cff2745b2fd2f20ef8cb9c

The portfolio lost $250 in February so the initial $1000 investment on New Year’s Day 2025 is now worth $816.

Here’s a visual summary of year one of the 2025 Top Ten portfolio:

https://preview.redd.it/teumm0272uqe1.png?width=173&format=png&auto=webp&s=52f138d998bc7fb72b8c511481c936a235f55517

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 seven 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, two months later:

https://preview.redd.it/8fgzaim92uqe1.png?width=227&format=png&auto=webp&s=f07259da039dc63ed5a09aad3b55ef6291e69940

February Performances:

  • The 2025 Top Ten Portfolio: -23%
  • COIN50: -24%

The February monthly victory goes to: The Top Ten Portfolio (barely)

Overall since January 1st, 2025:

  • The 2025 Top Ten Portfolio: -18%
  • COIN50: -22%

Overall lead: The 2024 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:

https://preview.redd.it/shd3qw5b2uqe1.png?width=667&format=png&auto=webp&s=a0608a0112a8fa0d4b5ddbcd72deb4bfe9e9f902

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?

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

https://preview.redd.it/410gpsxc2uqe1.png?width=442&format=png&auto=webp&s=d66c08b1c987c629f4d60c7487672764c06ecb48

That’s up +237% 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:

https://preview.redd.it/h154ietd2uqe1.png?width=1074&format=png&auto=webp&s=39ce8d8143bee4babf7f74df455d8ddfeeb847cf

In summary: That’s a +237% 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 +1% so far in 2025, so the initial $1k investment into crypto on New Year’s Day would be worth $1,012 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 = $2,228 today
  • $1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2019 = $2,376 today
  • $1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2020 = $1,844 today
  • $1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2021 = $1,585 today
  • $1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2022 = $1,249 today
  • $1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2023 = $1,551 today
  • $1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2024 = $1,248 today
  • $1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2025 = $1,012 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 $13,095.

That is up +64% since January 2018 compared to a +237% 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:

https://preview.redd.it/6p7xnw7l2uqe1.png?width=1156&format=png&auto=webp&s=f88d5ef418252dc71fd1b057af8cbbf6d97a5021

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. February’s extended report is on the 2019 Top Ten Portfolio. For more data, you can check out the latest 2018 Top Ten, 2020 Top Ten, 2021 Top Ten, 2022 Top Ten, 2023 Top Ten, and 2024 Top Ten reports as well.

submitted by /u/Joe-M-4
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