EXPERIMENT - Top 10 Crypto "Index Fund" - HODL all of 2018 - (Month One Recap - down 20%) - In Depth Explaination

The experiment:

Instead of hypothetically tracking cryptos throughout the year, I made an actual $1000 investment, $100 in each of the Top 10 cryptocurrencies by market cap as of the 1st of January 2018. I'm trying to keep it simple and accessible for beginners, a type of homemade Index Fund (and hopefully a bit of a proxy for the entire cryptocurrency market) for those looking to get into cryptos but maybe not quite ready to jump in yet.

The Rules:

Buy on January 1st, 2018. Run the experiment 365 days. Hold only. No selling. No trading.

Month one (January) update:

Winners - Etherium, easily - up 56.03% in the first month of the year. Ethereum was followed by Stellar Lumens up 46.88%.
Losers - Ripple was cut in half, down -50.47% followed by Bitcoin Cash which was down -43.89% in January.

Bitcoin dominance:

Fell in the month of January from 38% to 33% (down 5%).

Total Market Cap for the entire cryptocurrency sector:

Shrunk from 575B to 485B (down 16%).

Overall return on investment for January 2018:

My $1000 initial investment is now worth $792.49, a -20.75% decrease.

Implications:

One of the underlying questions for the experiment is: considering how much growth there was in 2017, are cryptos still good place to put your money in 2018 compared to other investments? To have something common to compare the cryptosphere to, I will also be tracking the S&P 500 which rose in January from 2,673 to 2,823 a 6% increase.

Conclusion:

The answer for January is a resounding NO(!), crypto was a horrible investment choice for January compared to the S&P 500. But a year is a long time, stay tuned, this is but a snapshot, not necessarily indicative of what's to come in 2018.

Much has already changed in the first part of February, but perhaps a helpful snapshot for someone who's on the fence/deciding whether or not to jump in to crypto (or at least any of the Top Ten). Here's a link to the video summary and stay tuned for my next update at the end of this month.

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Cheers,
Joe