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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 FIRST 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 FEB 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.
• JAN Highlights: Mixed month, but overall up. XRP nabs the monthly lead followed by SOL.
• 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 (+323% vs S&P500's +766% - see below for details).

Month One – Up +7%

https://preview.redd.it/trx8sjru1bje1.png?984&format=png&auto=webp&s=bcfb2b9a3a84d8b1c7bb96218ff95a1873cf86e5

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

January highlights for the 2025 Top Ten Portfolio:

• XRP and SOL lead the way
• Mixed month, but gains outpace losses

January 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/bzr1catv1bje1.png?259&format=png&auto=webp&s=3634081a2542903b9d2017dd280b0afdae59a6e9

January Winners and Losers

January Winners – XRP (+38%) easily took the monthly victory followed by SOL (+20%)

January Losers – AVAX (-5%) and BNB (-4%) underperformed their peers this month.

Overall Update: A mixed but mostly green start to the year

In contrast to January 2024, this year is off to a fairly good start (the 2024 Top Ten portfolio was down -14% after one month).

XRP is out to an early lead (up +38% in January) followed by SOL, +20% so far in 2025. The initial $100 invested in first place XRP thirty days ago is worth $138 today.

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

https://preview.redd.it/j7r49y1x1bje1.png?330&format=png&auto=webp&s=8e235240c03d3433c599294395b266c37ff73941

The portfolio gained $66 (+7%) in January so the initial $1000 investment on New Year’s Day 2025 is now worth $1,066.

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

https://preview.redd.it/2zfokz2y1bje1.png?199&format=png&auto=webp&s=8c0f771de7fe0a7330b7c8734bb4a5ba09aec9c7

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, one month later:

https://preview.redd.it/cai0brxy1bje1.png?227&format=png&auto=webp&s=527600a5a248fa851922b1157ea4c25fce7e9d3a

January Performances:

• The 2025 Top Ten Portfolio: +7%
• COIN50: +3%

The January monthly victory goes to: The 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/9q830vvz1bje1.png?826&format=png&auto=webp&s=de397f412f75383d8a51776f8da4474de69bb9ad

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 +73% (total value $1,725)
• 2019 Top Ten Experiment: up +761% (total value $8,612)
• 2020 Top Ten Experiment: up +1010% (total value $11,098) (best performing portfolio)
• 2021 Top Ten Experiment: up +391% (total value $4,911)
• 2022 Top Ten Experiment: up +5% (total value $1046) (worst performing portfolio)
• 2023 Top Ten Experiment: up +240% (total value $3,399)
• 2024 Top Ten Experiment: up +100% (total value $1,998)
• 2025 Top Ten Experiment: up +7% (total value $1,066)

Taking the eight portfolios together:

After a $8,000 total investment in the 2018 – 2025 Top Ten Cryptocurrencies, the combined portfolios are worth $33,855

https://preview.redd.it/s8v0vci12bje1.png?541&format=png&auto=webp&s=dcf7abe1e229b0ac861308ffbb4d021049b16acc

That’s up +323% 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/hbnt3pe22bje1.png?1074&format=png&auto=webp&s=398ca9d18c0995634af7a64b2d7b23b71313f9a5

In summary: That’s a +323% 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 +3% so far in 2025, so the initial $1k investment into crypto on New Year’s Day would be worth $1,027 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 = $2,260 today
• $1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2019 = $2,411 today
• $1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2020 = $1,870 today
• $1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2021 = $1,608 today
• $1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2022 = $1,268 today
• $1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2023 = $1,574 today
• $1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2024 = $1,266 today
• $1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2025 = $1,027 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 $13,284.

That is up +66% since January 2018 compared to a +323% 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/413iyng32bje1.png?1156&format=png&auto=webp&s=ecf84d31cb1e54b35f382ea779cfc009c59476f0

Conclusion:

Not a bad start to the year for crypto, we’ll see what 2025 holds for the Top Ten Portfolio.

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