I bought $1k of the Top 10 Cryptos on January 1st, 2025 (Q1 Update/Month 3/-22%)

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I bought $1k of the Top 10 Cryptos on January 1st, 2025 (Q1 Update/Month 3/-22%)

I bought $1k of the Top 10 Cryptos on January 1st, 2025 (Q1 Update/Month 3/-22%)

EXPERIMENT – Tracking 2025 Top Ten Cryptocurrencies – Month Three – Down -22%

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

Welcome to your monthly no-shill data dump: Here's the Q1 report for 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 APR 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.
  • MARCH Highlights: Mostly red month, only Tron and ADA green. XRP has overall lead, but all ten cryptos in the 2025 Experiment are underwater YTD.
  • 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 (+218% vs S&P500's +55% – see below for details).

Month Three – Down -22%

https://preview.redd.it/u5cl3snm38ue1.png?width=1098&format=png&auto=webp&s=a948f0a8c8157146d6ef3ead326e7b44ba05fa56

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:

https://preview.redd.it/qhfj0spq38ue1.png?width=375&format=png&auto=webp&s=ff06d20a7f6e5705a3d12b9a2b4c126f05f3d029

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

March Winners and Losers

March WinnersADA and Tron, up +1% and +2% respectively. Second straight monthly victory for Tron.

March LosersDOGE (-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:

https://preview.redd.it/00sp2dmt38ue1.png?width=336&format=png&auto=webp&s=01e3853a797f6a05ff8a68be7ebd1b1fbbe35a1b

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:

https://preview.redd.it/v07s94mu38ue1.png?width=225&format=png&auto=webp&s=f64f2197d6f4c7234337f3f968e9c0cb35288dbf

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:

https://preview.redd.it/doiz8azw38ue1.png?width=465&format=png&auto=webp&s=49fca4e3533c8c59ec20e6141e8f6b1a3845af45

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:

https://preview.redd.it/hudwfd7y38ue1.png?width=912&format=png&auto=webp&s=85daa324a894ca70bbefb58ed9568cbab91ed2e4

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/plwr7wx048ue1.png?width=603&format=png&auto=webp&s=1295b3ea551ce752e3584c589b6545cea4777948

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:

https://preview.redd.it/hs18tyj348ue1.png?width=961&format=png&auto=webp&s=30339161168bfcf19a1f0023e697377e00b08c97

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:

https://preview.redd.it/rw8p35d748ue1.png?width=1156&format=png&auto=webp&s=d6d00c22a36de286877381ae44967eabd40d20ec

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.

submitted by /u/Joe-M-4
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