In brief

  • An investor put $1,000 in the top 10 cryptocurrencies in January 2019 as an experiment.
  • His investment has so far gained a staggering 53.8% profit—beating the stock market.
  • But the investor also conducted the experiment this year and in 2018 and the S&P 500 is the winner overall.

A cryptocurrency investor yesterday posted his impressive gains from his experiment: buying $1,000 worth of the ten most popular cryptocurrencies in January 2019. Since kicking off the test, he’s made a 53.8% profit; accordingly, that $1,000 invested is now worth $1,538. 

The investor, who goes by the username Joe-M-4 on Reddit, said in his “The Top 10 Crypto Index Fund Experiment” post that had he conducted the same experiment with the S&P 500, his investment would be $1,350—a 35% increase. 

“Despite a tough month, the 2019 Top Ten are +54% and still well ahead of the stock market,” he said in the post. Joe’s referring to the market pullback last month, when this summer’s bull run appeared to come to a close. 

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Joe’s experiment showed that many of the cryptocurrency assets he invested in—Bitcoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, EOS, Bitcoin SV, Litecoin and Tron—are up since January 2019. But the rest, Stellar and XRP, are all down. Tether, the US dollar-pegged stablecoin, stayed the same.  

Many of the cryptocurrencies he invested in at the start of the experiment have dropped out of the top 10—replaced by coins such as Polkadot and DeFi giant Chainlink. 

But cryptocurrencies are not the overall winners when looking at Joe’s entire portfolio. He conducted the same “experiments” in 2018 and 2020. Combining all results, the stock market is winning—for now. 

The $3,000 invested in crypto for the three experiments so far has gained 11%—making the initial combined investments now worth $‭3,340. Though if Joe had put his $3,000 in the S&P 500, it would be worth $3,660, a gain of 22%. 

But crypto isn’t far behind…

Disclaimer

The views and opinions expressed by the author are for informational purposes only and do not constitute financial, investment, or other advice.