5 years of the ‘Top 10 Cryptos’ experiment and the lessons learned – Cointelegraph Magazine

When Redditor Joe Greene started the Top 10 Cryptos experiment in 2018, he bought $1,000 of Dash, NEM and Iota, among others, only to watch it crash to $150. But five years on, his experiment has paid off big time.

The rules: Buy $100 of each of the top 10 cryptocurrencies on Jan. 1, 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021. Hold only. No selling. No trading. Report monthly.

Every January since 2018, Greene has reviewed a list of the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market cap from his tropical office in Bali. He puts $100 of his own money into each, tracks the performance every four months or so, and publishes the findings on his website and on Reddit.

When he began, crypto indexes were few and far between, so there wasn’t an easy alternative. Having invested in stocks for years before moving into crypto, Greene predicted that chasing tokens on a hot streak was dangerous — unless done consistently — and this was indeed proven so by his experiment with the Top Ten Crypto Index Funds. 

Bitcoin 2017

Like almost everyone else that year, Greene was mesmerized by the sudden rise of Bitcoin during the 2017 bull market. “I remember looking to buy a rig to do some mining, but it turns out they were all sold out. So, I thought, ‘Whatever, I’ll just go out and buy some coins instead,’” he tells Magazine. A combination of the underlying technology, the financial elements and the future direction of the asset class kept Greene in the sector. He has been blogging with the project ever since. 

At the beginning, Greene was relatively new to crypto like his audience. He explains:

“I came through Reddit and some online articles, and everyone was pretty much shilling sketchy returns, although there were a few diamonds in the rough.” 

Faced with uncertainty, Greene decided to stick with his normal investing philosophy of holding on to what he purchased and refraining from excessive trading. “Outside of crypto, I’m not a trader, and I’m convinced that very few people are traders. Something like only 0.5% of traders are profitable over the long run,” says Greene. “So, yeah, I ain’t a trader. And I learned my lessons long ago.” Greene’s basic philosophy is that it’s safest to invest in low-cost, super diversified index funds — which is Warren Buffett’s advice for the majority of investors, too. But there simply wasn’t anything like it at the time in late 2017. So, Greene decided to make his own.