​
EXPERIMENT - Tracking Top 10 Cryptos of 2019 - Month Twenty-Two - UP +66%
Like crypto and numbers? Or want to detox from the first meme weekend? Welcome!
\Note - price snapshots are always taken on the 1st of each month, so numbers below are before crypto spiked in early Nov.**
See the full blog post with all the tables here.
tl;dr

• Moons to first one to find the three hidden cultural references in this post.
• What's this all about? I purchased $100 of each of Top Ten Cryptos in Jan. 2019, haven't sold or traded. Did the same in 2018 and 2020. Learn more about the history and rules of the Experiments here.
• October - BTC had a great month, followed by Litecoin and BCH. Crypto diverged from traditional markets this month, a welcome change.
• Overall since Jan. 2019 - Bitcoin (+262%) still far ahead, followed by ETH (+191%).
• 2019 Top Ten performing best out of the three experiments.
• Combining all three three years, Top Ten cryptos are tied with the S&P if I'd taken a similar approach.

Month Twenty Two – UP 66%

2019 Top Ten Snapshot for October
The 2019 Portfolio had a solid month, and was the best performer of the Top Ten Crypto Index Fund Experiments. Most of the cryptos ended October in positive or neutral territory, while the losses of the worst performers were no biggie (at least for crypto).

Question of the month:

In early October, the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) charged this crypto exchange with illegally operating an unregistered trading platform.

A) Bittrex
B) Binance
C) Bitmex
D) That other crypto exchange that starts with the letter “B”
Scroll down for the answer.

Ranking and October Winners and Losers

2019 Top Ten Ranking - 40% dropout rate
After losing quite a bit of ground in the rankings in September, the 2019 Top Ten rebounded a bit in October. Only BSV finished down on the month, down two places (from #9 to #11) and dropping out of the Top Ten. The rest either held or climbed: EOS, Tron and Stellar each advanced one position each and Litecoin picked up four places and was able to rejoin the Top Ten.
It’s good to have LTC back in the familiar confines of the Top Ten, as last month it found itself on the outside looking in, for the first time since the Experiments started back in January 2018.
40% of the crypotos that were in the Top Ten on January 1st, 2019 have dropped out: Tron, Stellar, BSV, and EOS have been replaced by BNB, DOT, ADA, and LINK.
October Winners – Big Poppa BTC had a great month, finishing up +25%. Second place goes to LTC, up +17% in October, followed by BCH, up +14%.
October Losers – The losses were moderate this month, but the L for October goes to BSV, which lost -7% and fell out of the Top Ten. EOS was second worst performing, down -5%.
For overly competitive nerds, here is a tally of which coins have the most monthly wins and losses during the first 22 months of the 2019 Top Ten Experiment:
2019 Ws/Ls
Because it's the default winner in down months, Tether is still far ahead in terms of monthly victories (7). That’s more than twice as much as second place BSV, BTC, and ETH. And although BSV is up 74% since January 2019, it dominates the monthly loss count: it has now finished last in nine out of twenty-two months (paying attention, swing traders?). And XRP is still the only crypto that has yet to notch a monthly win.

Overall update – BTC’s lead increases, XRP back to the basement, 2019 Top Ten pulls ahead of other Experiments.

BTC extended the lead it carved out last month over second place ETH in October. The top two are up +262% and +191% respectively, followed distantly by Litecoin, which is up +79% since January 2019. The initial $100 investment in BTC is currently worth $369.
For the first time since April 2019, BSV has dropped out of the Top Ten.
Twenty-two months into the 2019 Top Ten Index Fund Experiment, 70% of the 2019 Top Ten cryptos are either flat or in the green. After barely escaping the basement last month, XRP has once again sunk to the bottom of the pack, down -33% since January 2019.
At +66%, the 2019 Top Ten Portfolio has pulled ahead of the 2020 Top Ten Portfolio’s +61% gain and both are far, far ahead of the 2018 group , which is down -74% (more on that below).

Total Market Cap for the entire cryptocurrency sector:

Total market cap since Jan 2019 is +215%
Since January 2019, the total market cap for crypto is up +215%. The overall market gained about $50B in October, ending the month just over the psychologically important $400B mark. This is now the highest month-end level since the 2019 Top Ten Experiment began 22 months ago.

Bitcoin dominance:

Are you into BitDom?
After spending much of the year locked in the 65% range, BitDom took a short break in the summer to dip it low, but then has picked it up slow, and has now popped back up to 63%. As always, a high Bitcoin dominance signals less of an appetite for altcoins. Zooming out, the BitDom range since the beginning of the experiment in January 2019 has been between 50%-70%.

Overall return on investment since January 1st, 2019:

The 2019 Group gained $122 in October, so after the initial $1000 investment, the 2019 Top Ten Crypto Portfolio is worth $1,660.
2019 Top Ten Index Fund Experiment ROI
For some context, here’s a look at the ROI over the life of the first 22 months of the 2019 Top Ten Index Fund experiment, month by month:
2019 Top Ten ROI summary
Unlike the completely red table you’ll see in the 2018 Top Ten Experiment, the 2019 crypto table is almost all green. The first month was the lowest point (-9%), and the highest point (+114%) was May 2019.
At +66%, the 2019 Top Ten Portfolio is now the best performing out of the three Experiments but not by much: the 2020 Top Ten Portfolio is up +61%.
Speaking of the other Experiments, let’s take a look at how the 2019 Top Ten Index Fund Portfolio compare to the parallel projects:

• 2018 Top Ten Experiment: down -74% (total value $264)
• 2020 Top Ten Experiment: up +61% (total value $1,613)

Taking the three portfolios together, here’s the bottom bottom bottom line:
After a $3000 investment in the 2018, 2019, and 2020 Top Ten Cryptocurrencies, my combined portfolios are worth $‭3,537‬ ($264+ $1,660 +$1,613).
That’s up about +18% for the three combined portfolios, compared to +11% last month.
Here’s a table to help visualize the progress of the combined portfolios:
2018, 2019, 2020 Top Tens combined ROI
To sum up: +18% gain by dropping $1k once a year on whichever cryptos happened to be in the Top Ten on January 1st, 2018, 2019, and 2020.
But what if I’d gone all in on only one Top Ten crypto for the past three years? While many have come and gone over the life of the experiment, only five cryptos have started in Top Ten for all three years: BTC, ETH, XRP, BCH, and LTC. Let’s take a look at those five:
​
A tie: BTC catches up to ETH this month for leader of the Three Year Club
Up until this month, Ethereum would have been your best bet. As of the end of October, it’s basically a tie between BTC and ETH. Both are up +121%, (although BTC is technically $21 ahead of ETH).
On the other hand, if I had followed this world’s slowest dollar cost averaging approach with XRP, I’d be down -32%.
With BCH I would have just about broken even.
Alright, that’s crypto. How does crypto compare to the stock market?

Comparison to S&P 500:

I’m also tracking the S&P 500 as part of the experiments to have a comparison point with traditional markets. The S&P continued to fall from an all time high in the summer, and is now up +30% since January 2019.
S&P since Jan 2019? +30%
The initial $1k investment I put into crypto 22 months ago would be worth $1,300 had it been redirected to the S&P 500 in January 2019. +30% is not a bad return at all. But the 2019 Top Ten Portfolio is up more than double (+66)% over the same time period.
That’s 2019. But what if I took the same world’s-slowest-dollar-cost-averaging $1,000-per-year-on-January-1st crypto approach with the S&P 500? It would yield the following:

• $1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2018 = $1220 today
• $1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2019 = $1300 today
• $1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2020 = $1010 today

Taken together, here’s the bottom bottom bottom line for a similar approach with the S&P:
After three $1,000 investments into an S&P 500 index fund in January 2018, 2019, and 2020, my portfolio would be worth $3,530.
That is up +17.6% since January 2018. Compared to a +17.9% gain of the combined Top Ten Crypto Experiment Portfolios. You can also compare against five individual coins (BTC, ETH, XRP, BCH, and LTC) by using the table above if you want.
It’s small, but that tiny 0.3% difference in favor of crypto. That’s now seven monthly victories for the S&P vs. three monthly victories for crypto, all clustered in the second half of the year.
​
Crypto re-takes the lead in October....barely

Conclusion:

Thanks mainly to Bitcoin, October was a good month for crypto and a good month for the 2019 Top Ten Portfolio. As traditional markets have struggled over the last few months, crypto seems to be headed in the opposite direction. I’m looking forward to seeing if those trends hold in the last few months of a crazy year.
Take care of each other out there, stay safe.
Thanks for reading and for supporting the experiment. I hope you’ve found it helpful. I continue to be committed to seeing this process through and reporting along the way. Feel free to reach out with any questions and stay tuned for progress reports. Keep an eye out for the original 2018 Top Ten Crypto Index Fund Experiment and the 2020 Top Ten Experiment.

And the Answer is…

C) Bitmex
In October, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission filed money-laundering and other charges against BitMEX for illegally operating in the US.

EXPERIMENT - Tracking Top 10 Cryptos of 2018 - Month 33 - Down -76%
See the full blog post with all the tables here.
tl;dr

• First one to find the three hidden cultural references gets some moons.
• What's this all about? I purchased $100 of each of Top Ten Cryptos in Jan. 2018, haven't sold or traded. Did the same in 2019 and 2020. Learn more about the history and rules of the Experiments here.
• September - BTC, although -8%, outperforms the field this month.
• Overall since Jan. 2018 - Bitcoin miles ahead of the pack, and only one close-ish to break even point.
• Combining all three three years, Top Ten cryptos underperforming S&P if I'd taken a similar approach.

Month Thirty Three – Down 76%

2018 Top Ten Summary for September
After a rough start to September, crypto spent the month trying in vain to claw back ground. While a few coins rebounded quite a bit from the monthly lows, most ended up finishing the month significantly down. Out of the 2018 Top Ten group, Bitcoin lost the least, down -8% in September. NEM followed it’s winning August (yes, you read that right) with the poorest performance, down -26%.

Question of the month:

Which cryptocurrency exchange won approval to create America’s first crypto bank in September?

A) Binance B) Binance.us C) Kraken D) Coinbase
Scroll down for the answer.

Ranking and September Winners and Losers

Rank of 2018 Portfolio - 50% no longer in Top Ten
A lot of shuffling in September. On the upside, Bitcoin Cash and Cardano gained one place each landing at #5 and #10 respectively. Cardano gets special mention for re-entering the Top Ten.
Heading the wrong direction were IOTA, NEM, Dash, and Stellar each falling two or three spots.
The big story though, for long time crypto watchers, was the ejection of Litecoin from the Top Ten, down five places from #7 to #12 in just one month. For some context, Litecoin’s absence from the Top Ten is a Top Ten Experiment first. It is also the first time since CoinMarketCap has tracked crypto rankings that Litecoin has not been in the Top Ten.
Drop outs: After thirty-three months of this experiment 50% of the cryptos that started 2018 in the Top Ten have dropped out. NEM, Litecoin, Dash, IOTA, and Stellar have been replaced by Binance Coin, Tether, BSV, LINK, and most recently, DOT.
September Winners – Although it lost -8% of its value, this month’s W goes to Bitcoin. ADA gets second place, down -15% and climbing back into the Top Ten.
September Losers – As most probably expected after an extremely out of character victory last month, NEM came back down to earth in September, bigly, down -26%. Litecoin finished right behind, down -24% and dropping out of the Top Ten.
For the overly competitive, below is a tally of the winners of the first 33 months of the 2018 Top Ten Crypto Index Fund Experiment. Bitcoin still has the most monthly wins (8) and Cardano in second place with 6 monthly wins. With its poor September performance, NEM now has 7 monthly losses.
Ws and Ls - One clear winner
Every crypto has at least one monthly win and Bitcoin is unique as the only cryptocurrency that hasn’t lost a month yet since January 2018.

Overall update – BTC solidly in the lead, followed by ETH. Dash in the basement, LTC drops out of the Top Ten.

Even though BTC took a bit of a detour on its way back to break-even point, it is still far ahead of the field, down -17% since January 2018. The initial investment of $100 thirty-three months ago is now worth about $83. Second place Ethereum is down -49% over the same time period.
At this point in the 2018 Top Ten Experiment, Dash is at the bottom. It is currently worth $70.49, down from a January 1st, 2018 starting price of over $1,000. That’s a loss of -93%. The initial $100 invested in Dash 33 months ago is now worth $6.77.
The big story this month is LTC’s departure from the Top Ten, the first time since I started the experiment back in January 2018. Whether or not it will eventually fend off the new generation of coins remains to be seen, but it certainly is noteworthy to have one of the most well known and long standing cryptos drop out of the Top Ten. Consider pouring one out for Litecoin.

Total Market Cap for the entire cryptocurrency sector:

The crypto market lost over $35B in September and is down -39% since January 2018. The value of the overall crypto market is near where it was in August of this year, just a few months back. As painful as the beginning of the month was, looking at a table like this helps with perspective, especially if you’re panic prone.

Bitcoin dominance:

After steadily dipping for months, BitDom increased a bit in September, up to 57.5%.
For some context: since the beginning of the experiment, the range of Bitcoin dominance has been quite wide: we saw a high of 70% BitDom in September 2019 and a low of 33% BitDom in February 2018.

Overall return on $1,000 investment since January 1st, 2018:

The 2018 Top Ten Portfolio lost -$50 this month. If I cashed out today, the $1000 initial investment would return about $238, down -76% from January 2018.
September broke an encouraging upward trend, but at least the portfolio is taking a break from the -80% range. Here’s a look at the ROI over the life of the experiment, month by month, for some context:
33 Monthly ROIs on Top Ten since Jan 2018
The absolute bottom was -88% back in January 2019.
So the Top Ten Cryptos of 2018 are down -76%. What about the 2019 and 2020 Top Tens? Let’s take a look:

• 2019 Top Ten Experiment: up +54% (total value $1,538)
• 2020 Top Ten Experiment: up +56% (total value $1,564)

So overall? Taking the three portfolios together, here’s the bottom bottom bottom line:
After a $3000 investment in the 2018, 2019, and 2020 Top Ten Cryptocurrencies, my combined portfolios are worth $‭3,340‬ ($238+ $1,538 +$1,564).
That’s up about +11% for the three combined portfolios, compared to +31% last month.
Here’s a table to help visualize:
Combined ROI on $3k over 3 years - UP +11%
That’s a +11% gain by investing $1k on whichever cryptos happened to be in the Top Ten on January 1st for three straight years.
But surely you’d do better if you went all in on one crypto, right?
Depends on your choice. Let’s take a look:
​
ETH for the win
Only five cryptos have started in the Top Ten for all three years: BTC, ETH, XRP, BCH, and LTC (unless Litecoin can make a comeback by the 1st of Jan. 2021, it’s not going to make the four year club!). Knowing what we know now, which one would have been best to go all in on?
Ethereum, by a pretty good margin: the initial $3k would be up +104%, worth $6,118 today. The worst choice of a basket to put all your eggs in at this point in the experiment is XRP, down by almost one third.

Comparison to S&P 500:

I’m also tracking the S&P 500 as part of the experiment to have a comparison point with other popular investments options. The S&P 500 Index fell from an all time high in August, but is currently up +26% since January 2018.
S&P since Jan. 2018
The initial $1k investment into crypto on January 1st, 2018 would have been worth about $1260 had it been redirected to the S&P.
But what if I took 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? Here are the numbers:

• $1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2018 = $1260 today
• $1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2019 = $1350 today
• $1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2020 = $1050 today

Taken together, here’s the bottom bottom bottom line for a similar approach with the S&P:
After three $1,000 investments into an S&P 500 index fund in January 2018, 2019, and 2020, my portfolio would be worth $3,660.
That is up +22% since January 2018, compared to a +11% gain of the combined Top Ten Crypto Experiment Portfolios.
That’s an 11% swing in favor of the S&P 500 and breaks a two month mini-streak of wins from the Top Ten crypto portfolios.
S&P vs. Top Ten Crypto Experiments
That’s seven monthly victories for the S&P vs. two monthly victories for crypto. The largest gap so far was a 22% difference in favor of the S&P in June.

Conclusion:

September was a tough month for both traditional and crypto markets. What’s next for the rest of 2020? More volatility is no doubt to come as we enter the last quarter of a truly unpredictable and exhausting year. Buckle up.
Thanks for reading and for supporting the experiment. I hope you’ve found it helpful. I continue to be committed to seeing this process through and reporting along the way. Feel free to reach out with any questions and stay tuned for progress reports. Keep an eye out for my parallel projects where I repeat the experiment twice, purchasing another $1000 ($100 each) of two new sets of Top Ten cryptos as of January 1st, 2019 then again on January 1st, 2020.

And the Answer is…

C) Kraken
According to an official announcement in September, Kraken is “the first digital asset company in U.S. history to receive a bank charter recognized under federal and state law.”

Reposting after was mistakenly removed by mods (since resolved - Thanks)
A frequent question I see being asked is how Cosmos, Polkadot and Avalanche compare? Whilst there are similarities there are also a lot of differences. This article is not intended to be an extensive in-depth list, but rather an overview based on some of the criteria that I feel are most important.
For better formatting see https://medium.com/ava-hub/comparison-between-avalanche-cosmos-and-polkadot-a2a98f46c03b
https://preview.redd.it/e8s7dj3ivpq51.png?width=428&format=png&auto=webp&s=5d0463462702637118c7527ebf96e91f4a80b290

Overview

Cosmos

Cosmos is a heterogeneous network of many independent parallel blockchains, each powered by classical BFT consensus algorithms like Tendermint. Developers can easily build custom application specific blockchains, called Zones, through the Cosmos SDK framework. These Zones connect to Hubs, which are specifically designed to connect zones together.
The vision of Cosmos is to have thousands of Zones and Hubs that are Interoperable through the Inter-Blockchain Communication Protocol (IBC). Cosmos can also connect to other systems through peg zones, which are specifically designed zones that each are custom made to interact with another ecosystem such as Ethereum and Bitcoin. Cosmos does not use Sharding with each Zone and Hub being sovereign with their own validator set.
For a more in-depth look at Cosmos and provide more reference to points made in this article, please see my three part series — Part One, Part Two, Part Three
(There's a youtube video with a quick video overview of Cosmos on the medium article - https://medium.com/ava-hub/comparison-between-avalanche-cosmos-and-polkadot-a2a98f46c03b)

Polkadot

Polkadot is a heterogeneous blockchain protocol that connects multiple specialised blockchains into one unified network. It achieves scalability through a sharding infrastructure with multiple blockchains running in parallel, called parachains, that connect to a central chain called the Relay Chain. Developers can easily build custom application specific parachains through the Substrate development framework.
The relay chain validates the state transition of connected parachains, providing shared state across the entire ecosystem. If the Relay Chain must revert for any reason, then all of the parachains would also revert. This is to ensure that the validity of the entire system can persist, and no individual part is corruptible. The shared state makes it so that the trust assumptions when using parachains are only those of the Relay Chain validator set, and no other. Interoperability is enabled between parachains through Cross-Chain Message Passing (XCMP) protocol and is also possible to connect to other systems through bridges, which are specifically designed parachains or parathreads that each are custom made to interact with another ecosystem such as Ethereum and Bitcoin. The hope is to have 100 parachains connect to the relay chain.
For a more in-depth look at Polkadot and provide more reference to points made in this article, please see my three part series — Part One, Part Two, Part Three
(There's a youtube video with a quick video overview of Polkadot on the medium article - https://medium.com/ava-hub/comparison-between-avalanche-cosmos-and-polkadot-a2a98f46c03b)

Avalanche

Avalanche is a platform of platforms, ultimately consisting of thousands of subnets to form a heterogeneous interoperable network of many blockchains, that takes advantage of the revolutionary Avalanche Consensus protocols to provide a secure, globally distributed, interoperable and trustless framework offering unprecedented decentralisation whilst being able to comply with regulatory requirements.
Avalanche allows anyone to create their own tailor-made application specific blockchains, supporting multiple custom virtual machines such as EVM and WASM and written in popular languages like Go (with others coming in the future) rather than lightly used, poorly-understood languages like Solidity. This virtual machine can then be deployed on a custom blockchain network, called a subnet, which consist of a dynamic set of validators working together to achieve consensus on the state of a set of many blockchains where complex rulesets can be configured to meet regulatory compliance.
Avalanche was built with serving financial markets in mind. It has native support for easily creating and trading digital smart assets with complex custom rule sets that define how the asset is handled and traded to ensure regulatory compliance can be met. Interoperability is enabled between blockchains within a subnet as well as between subnets. Like Cosmos and Polkadot, Avalanche is also able to connect to other systems through bridges, through custom virtual machines made to interact with another ecosystem such as Ethereum and Bitcoin.
For a more in-depth look at Avalanche and provide more reference to points made in this article, please see here and here
(There's a youtube video with a quick video overview of Avalanche on the medium article - https://medium.com/ava-hub/comparison-between-avalanche-cosmos-and-polkadot-a2a98f46c03b)

Comparison between Cosmos, Polkadot and Avalanche

A frequent question I see being asked is how Cosmos, Polkadot and Avalanche compare? Whilst there are similarities there are also a lot of differences. This article is not intended to be an extensive in-depth list, but rather an overview based on some of the criteria that I feel are most important. For a more in-depth view I recommend reading the articles for each of the projects linked above and coming to your own conclusions. I want to stress that it’s not a case of one platform being the killer of all other platforms, far from it. There won’t be one platform to rule them all, and too often the tribalism has plagued this space. Blockchains are going to completely revolutionise most industries and have a profound effect on the world we know today. It’s still very early in this space with most adoption limited to speculation and trading mainly due to the limitations of Blockchain and current iteration of Ethereum, which all three of these platforms hope to address. For those who just want a quick summary see the image at the bottom of the article. With that said let’s have a look

Scalability

Cosmos

Each Zone and Hub in Cosmos is capable of up to around 1000 transactions per second with bandwidth being the bottleneck in consensus. Cosmos aims to have thousands of Zones and Hubs all connected through IBC. There is no limit on the number of Zones / Hubs that can be created

Polkadot

Parachains in Polkadot are also capable of up to around 1500 transactions per second. A portion of the parachain slots on the Relay Chain will be designated as part of the parathread pool, the performance of a parachain is split between many parathreads offering lower performance and compete amongst themselves in a per-block auction to have their transactions included in the next relay chain block. The number of parachains is limited by the number of validators on the relay chain, they hope to be able to achieve 100 parachains.

Avalanche

Avalanche is capable of around 4500 transactions per second per subnet, this is based on modest hardware requirements to ensure maximum decentralisation of just 2 CPU cores and 4 GB of Memory and with a validator size of over 2,000 nodes. Performance is CPU-bound and if higher performance is required then more specialised subnets can be created with higher minimum requirements to be able to achieve 10,000 tps+ in a subnet. Avalanche aims to have thousands of subnets (each with multiple virtual machines / blockchains) all interoperable with each other. There is no limit on the number of Subnets that can be created.

Results

All three platforms offer vastly superior performance to the likes of Bitcoin and Ethereum 1.0. Avalanche with its higher transactions per second, no limit on the number of subnets / blockchains that can be created and the consensus can scale to potentially millions of validators all participating in consensus scores ✅✅✅. Polkadot claims to offer more tps than cosmos, but is limited to the number of parachains (around 100) whereas with Cosmos there is no limit on the number of hubs / zones that can be created. Cosmos is limited to a fairly small validator size of around 200 before performance degrades whereas Polkadot hopes to be able to reach 1000 validators in the relay chain (albeit only a small number of validators are assigned to each parachain). Thus Cosmos and Polkadot scores ✅✅
https://preview.redd.it/2o0brllyvpq51.png?width=1000&format=png&auto=webp&s=8f62bb696ecaafcf6184da005d5fe0129d504518

Decentralisation

Cosmos

Tendermint consensus is limited to around 200 validators before performance starts to degrade. Whilst there is the Cosmos Hub it is one of many hubs in the network and there is no central hub or limit on the number of zones / hubs that can be created.

Polkadot

Polkadot has 1000 validators in the relay chain and these are split up into a small number that validate each parachain (minimum of 14). The relay chain is a central point of failure as all parachains connect to it and the number of parachains is limited depending on the number of validators (they hope to achieve 100 parachains). Due to the limited number of parachain slots available, significant sums of DOT will need to be purchased to win an auction to lease the slot for up to 24 months at a time. Thus likely to lead to only those with enough funds to secure a parachain slot. Parathreads are however an alternative for those that require less and more varied performance for those that can’t secure a parachain slot.

Avalanche

Avalanche consensus scan scale to tens of thousands of validators, even potentially millions of validators all participating in consensus through repeated sub-sampling. The more validators, the faster the network becomes as the load is split between them. There are modest hardware requirements so anyone can run a node and there is no limit on the number of subnets / virtual machines that can be created.

Results

Avalanche offers unparalleled decentralisation using its revolutionary consensus protocols that can scale to millions of validators all participating in consensus at the same time. There is no limit to the number of subnets and virtual machines that can be created, and they can be created by anyone for a small fee, it scores ✅✅✅. Cosmos is limited to 200 validators but no limit on the number of zones / hubs that can be created, which anyone can create and scores ✅✅. Polkadot hopes to accommodate 1000 validators in the relay chain (albeit these are split amongst each of the parachains). The number of parachains is limited and maybe cost prohibitive for many and the relay chain is a ultimately a single point of failure. Whilst definitely not saying it’s centralised and it is more decentralised than many others, just in comparison between the three, it scores ✅
https://preview.redd.it/ckfamee0wpq51.png?width=1000&format=png&auto=webp&s=c4355f145d821fabf7785e238dbc96a5f5ce2846

Latency

Cosmos

Tendermint consensus used in Cosmos reaches finality within 6 seconds. Cosmos consists of many Zones and Hubs that connect to each other. Communication between 2 zones could pass through many hubs along the way, thus also can contribute to latency times depending on the path taken as explained in part two of the articles on Cosmos. It doesn’t need to wait for an extended period of time with risk of rollbacks.

Polkadot

Polkadot provides a Hybrid consensus protocol consisting of Block producing protocol, BABE, and then a finality gadget called GRANDPA that works to agree on a chain, out of many possible forks, by following some simpler fork choice rule. Rather than voting on every block, instead it reaches agreements on chains. As soon as more than 2/3 of validators attest to a chain containing a certain block, all blocks leading up to that one are finalized at once.
If an invalid block is detected after it has been finalised then the relay chain would need to be reverted along with every parachain. This is particularly important when connecting to external blockchains as those don’t share the state of the relay chain and thus can’t be rolled back. The longer the time period, the more secure the network is, as there is more time for additional checks to be performed and reported but at the expense of finality. Finality is reached within 60 seconds between parachains but for external ecosystems like Ethereum their state obviously can’t be rolled back like a parachain and so finality will need to be much longer (60 minutes was suggested in the whitepaper) and discussed in more detail in part three

Avalanche

Avalanche consensus achieves finality within 3 seconds, with most happening sub 1 second, immutable and completely irreversible. Any subnet can connect directly to another without having to go through multiple hops and any VM can talk to another VM within the same subnet as well as external subnets. It doesn’t need to wait for an extended period of time with risk of rollbacks.

Results

With regards to performance far too much emphasis is just put on tps as a metric, the other equally important metric, if not more important with regards to finance is latency. Throughput measures the amount of data at any given time that it can handle whereas latency is the amount of time it takes to perform an action. It’s pointless saying you can process more transactions per second than VISA when it takes 60 seconds for a transaction to complete. Low latency also greatly increases general usability and customer satisfaction, nowadays everyone expects card payments, online payments to happen instantly. Avalanche achieves the best results scoring ✅✅✅, Cosmos with comes in second with 6 second finality ✅✅ and Polkadot with 60 second finality (which may be 60 minutes for external blockchains) scores ✅
https://preview.redd.it/kzup5x42wpq51.png?width=1000&format=png&auto=webp&s=320eb4c25dc4fc0f443a7a2f7ff09567871648cd

Shared Security

Cosmos

Every Zone and Hub in Cosmos has their own validator set and different trust assumptions. Cosmos are researching a shared security model where a Hub can validate the state of connected zones for a fee but not released yet. Once available this will make shared security optional rather than mandatory.

Polkadot

Shared Security is mandatory with Polkadot which uses a Shared State infrastructure between the Relay Chain and all of the connected parachains. If the Relay Chain must revert for any reason, then all of the parachains would also revert. Every parachain makes the same trust assumptions, and as such the relay chain validates state transition and enables seamless interoperability between them. In return for this benefit, they have to purchase DOT and win an auction for one of the available parachain slots.
However, parachains can’t just rely on the relay chain for their security, they will also need to implement censorship resistance measures and utilise proof of work / proof of stake for each parachain as well as discussed in part three, thus parachains can’t just rely on the security of the relay chain, they need to ensure sybil resistance mechanisms using POW and POS are implemented on the parachain as well.

Avalanche

A subnet in Avalanche consists of a dynamic set of validators working together to achieve consensus on the state of a set of many blockchains where complex rulesets can be configured to meet regulatory compliance. So unlike in Cosmos where each zone / hub has their own validators, A subnet can validate a single or many virtual machines / blockchains with a single validator set. Shared security is optional

Results

Shared security is mandatory in polkadot and a key design decision in its infrastructure. The relay chain validates the state transition of all connected parachains and thus scores ✅✅✅. Subnets in Avalanche can validate state of either a single or many virtual machines. Each subnet can have their own token and shares a validator set, where complex rulesets can be configured to meet regulatory compliance. It scores ✅ ✅. Every Zone and Hub in cosmos has their own validator set / token but research is underway to have the hub validate the state transition of connected zones, but as this is still early in the research phase scores ✅ for now.
https://preview.redd.it/pbgyk3o3wpq51.png?width=1000&format=png&auto=webp&s=61c18e12932a250f5633c40633810d0f64520575

Current Adoption

Cosmos

The Cosmos project started in 2016 with an ICO held in April 2017. There are currently around 50 projects building on the Cosmos SDK with a full list can be seen here and filtering for Cosmos SDK . Not all of the projects will necessarily connect using native cosmos sdk and IBC and some have forked parts of the Cosmos SDK and utilise the tendermint consensus such as Binance Chain but have said they will connect in the future.

Polkadot

The Polkadot project started in 2016 with an ICO held in October 2017. There are currently around 70 projects building on Substrate and a full list can be seen here and filtering for Substrate Based. Like with Cosmos not all projects built using substrate will necessarily connect to Polkadot and parachains or parathreads aren’t currently implemented in either the Live or Test network (Kusama) as of the time of this writing.

Avalanche

Avalanche in comparison started much later with Ava Labs being founded in 2018. Avalanche held it’s ICO in July 2020. Due to lot shorter time it has been in development, the number of projects confirmed are smaller with around 14 projects currently building on Avalanche. Due to the customisability of the platform though, many virtual machines can be used within a subnet making the process incredibly easy to port projects over. As an example, it will launch with the Ethereum Virtual Machine which enables byte for byte compatibility and all the tooling like Metamask, Truffle etc. will work, so projects can easily move over to benefit from the performance, decentralisation and low gas fees offered. In the future Cosmos and Substrate virtual machines could be implemented on Avalanche.

Results

Whilst it’s still early for all 3 projects (and the entire blockchain space as a whole), there is currently more projects confirmed to be building on Cosmos and Polkadot, mostly due to their longer time in development. Whilst Cosmos has fewer projects, zones are implemented compared to Polkadot which doesn’t currently have parachains. IBC to connect zones and hubs together is due to launch Q2 2021, thus both score ✅✅✅. Avalanche has been in development for a lot shorter time period, but is launching with an impressive feature set right from the start with ability to create subnets, VMs, assets, NFTs, permissioned and permissionless blockchains, cross chain atomic swaps within a subnet, smart contracts, bridge to Ethereum etc. Applications can easily port over from other platforms and use all the existing tooling such as Metamask / Truffle etc but benefit from the performance, decentralisation and low gas fees offered. Currently though just based on the number of projects in comparison it scores ✅.
https://preview.redd.it/4zpi6s85wpq51.png?width=1000&format=png&auto=webp&s=e91ade1a86a5d50f4976f3b23a46e9287b08e373

Enterprise Adoption

Cosmos

Cosmos enables permissioned and permissionless zones which can connect to each other with the ability to have full control over who validates the blockchain. For permissionless zones each zone / hub can have their own token and they are in control who validates.

Polkadot

With polkadot the state transition is performed by a small randomly selected assigned group of validators from the relay chain plus with the possibility that state is rolled back if an invalid transaction of any of the other parachains is found. This may pose a problem for enterprises that need complete control over who performs validation for regulatory reasons. In addition due to the limited number of parachain slots available Enterprises would have to acquire and lock up large amounts of a highly volatile asset (DOT) and have the possibility that they are outbid in future auctions and find they no longer can have their parachain validated and parathreads don’t provide the guaranteed performance requirements for the application to function.

Avalanche

Avalanche enables permissioned and permissionless subnets and complex rulesets can be configured to meet regulatory compliance. For example a subnet can be created where its mandatory that all validators are from a certain legal jurisdiction, or they hold a specific license and regulated by the SEC etc. Subnets are also able to scale to tens of thousands of validators, and even potentially millions of nodes, all participating in consensus so every enterprise can run their own node rather than only a small amount. Enterprises don’t have to hold large amounts of a highly volatile asset, but instead pay a fee in AVAX for the creation of the subnets and blockchains which is burnt.

Results

Avalanche provides the customisability to run private permissioned blockchains as well as permissionless where the enterprise is in control over who validates the blockchain, with the ability to use complex rulesets to meet regulatory compliance, thus scores ✅✅✅. Cosmos is also able to run permissioned and permissionless zones / hubs so enterprises have full control over who validates a blockchain and scores ✅✅. Polkadot requires locking up large amounts of a highly volatile asset with the possibility of being outbid by competitors and being unable to run the application if the guaranteed performance is required and having to migrate away. The relay chain validates the state transition and can roll back the parachain should an invalid block be detected on another parachain, thus scores ✅.
https://preview.redd.it/li5jy6u6wpq51.png?width=1000&format=png&auto=webp&s=e2a95f1f88e5efbcf9e23c789ae0f002c8eb73fc

Interoperability

Cosmos

Cosmos will connect Hubs and Zones together through its IBC protocol (due to release in Q1 2020). Connecting to blockchains outside of the Cosmos ecosystem would either require the connected blockchain to fork their code to implement IBC or more likely a custom “Peg Zone” will be created specific to work with a particular blockchain it’s trying to bridge to such as Ethereum etc. Each Zone and Hub has different trust levels and connectivity between 2 zones can have different trust depending on which path it takes (this is discussed more in this article). Finality time is low at 6 seconds, but depending on the number of hops, this can increase significantly.

Polkadot

Polkadot’s shared state means each parachain that connects shares the same trust assumptions, of the relay chain validators and that if one blockchain needs to be reverted, all of them will need to be reverted. Interoperability is enabled between parachains through Cross-Chain Message Passing (XCMP) protocol and is also possible to connect to other systems through bridges, which are specifically designed parachains or parathreads that each are custom made to interact with another ecosystem such as Ethereum and Bitcoin. Finality time between parachains is around 60 seconds, but longer will be needed (initial figures of 60 minutes in the whitepaper) for connecting to external blockchains. Thus limiting the appeal of connecting two external ecosystems together through Polkadot. Polkadot is also limited in the number of Parachain slots available, thus limiting the amount of blockchains that can be bridged. Parathreads could be used for lower performance bridges, but the speed of future blockchains is only going to increase.

Avalanche

A subnet can validate multiple virtual machines / blockchains and all blockchains within a subnet share the same trust assumptions / validator set, enabling cross chain interoperability. Interoperability is also possible between any other subnet, with the hope Avalanche will consist of thousands of subnets. Each subnet may have a different trust level, but as the primary network consists of all validators then this can be used as a source of trust if required. As Avalanche supports many virtual machines, bridges to other ecosystems are created by running the connected virtual machine. There will be an Ethereum bridge using the EVM shortly after mainnet. Finality time is much faster at sub 3 seconds (with most happening under 1 second) with no chance of rolling back so more appealing when connecting to external blockchains.

Results

All 3 systems are able to perform interoperability within their ecosystem and transfer assets as well as data, as well as use bridges to connect to external blockchains. Cosmos has different trust levels between its zones and hubs and can create issues depending on which path it takes and additional latency added. Polkadot provides the same trust assumptions for all connected parachains but has long finality and limited number of parachain slots available. Avalanche provides the same trust assumptions for all blockchains within a subnet, and different trust levels between subnets. However due to the primary network consisting of all validators it can be used for trust. Avalanche also has a much faster finality time with no limitation on the number of blockchains / subnets / bridges that can be created. Overall all three blockchains excel with interoperability within their ecosystem and each score ✅✅.
https://preview.redd.it/ai0bkbq8wpq51.png?width=1000&format=png&auto=webp&s=3e85ee6a3c4670f388ccea00b0c906c3fb51e415

Tokenomics

Cosmos

The ATOM token is the native token for the Cosmos Hub. It is commonly mistaken by people that think it’s the token used throughout the cosmos ecosystem, whereas it’s just used for one of many hubs in Cosmos, each with their own token. Currently ATOM has little utility as IBC isn’t released and has no connections to other zones / hubs. Once IBC is released zones may prefer to connect to a different hub instead and so ATOM is not used. ATOM isn’t a fixed capped supply token and supply will continuously increase with a yearly inflation of around 10% depending on the % staked. The current market cap for ATOM as of the time of this writing is $1 Billion with 203 million circulating supply. Rewards can be earnt through staking to offset the dilution caused by inflation. Delegators can also get slashed and lose a portion of their ATOM should the validator misbehave.

Polkadot

Polkadot’s native token is DOT and it’s used to secure the Relay Chain. Each parachain needs to acquire sufficient DOT to win an auction on an available parachain lease period of up to 24 months at a time. Parathreads have a fixed fee for registration that would realistically be much lower than the cost of acquiring a parachain slot and compete with other parathreads in a per-block auction to have their transactions included in the next relay chain block. DOT isn’t a fixed capped supply token and supply will continuously increase with a yearly inflation of around 10% depending on the % staked. The current market cap for DOT as of the time of this writing is $4.4 Billion with 852 million circulating supply. Delegators can also get slashed and lose their DOT (potentially 100% of their DOT for serious attacks) should the validator misbehave.

Avalanche

AVAX is the native token for the primary network in Avalanche. Every validator of any subnet also has to validate the primary network and stake a minimum of 2000 AVAX. There is no limit to the number of validators like other consensus methods then this can cater for tens of thousands even potentially millions of validators. As every validator validates the primary network, this can be a source of trust for interoperability between subnets as well as connecting to other ecosystems, thus increasing amount of transaction fees of AVAX. There is no slashing in Avalanche, so there is no risk to lose your AVAX when selecting a validator, instead rewards earnt for staking can be slashed should the validator misbehave. Because Avalanche doesn’t have direct slashing, it is technically possible for someone to both stake AND deliver tokens for something like a flash loan, under the invariant that all tokens that are staked are returned, thus being able to make profit with staked tokens outside of staking itself.
There will also be a separate subnet for Athereum which is a ‘spoon,’ or friendly fork, of Ethereum, which benefits from the Avalanche consensus protocol and applications in the Ethereum ecosystem. It’s native token ATH will be airdropped to ETH holders as well as potentially AVAX holders as well. This can be done for other blockchains as well.
Transaction fees on the primary network for all 3 of the blockchains as well as subscription fees for creating a subnet and blockchain are paid in AVAX and are burnt, creating deflationary pressure. AVAX is a fixed capped supply of 720 million tokens, creating scarcity rather than an unlimited supply which continuously increase of tokens at a compounded rate each year like others. Initially there will be 360 tokens minted at Mainnet with vesting periods between 1 and 10 years, with tokens gradually unlocking each quarter. The Circulating supply is 24.5 million AVAX with tokens gradually released each quater. The current market cap of AVAX is around $100 million.

Results

Avalanche’s AVAX with its fixed capped supply, deflationary pressure, very strong utility, potential to receive air drops and low market cap, means it scores ✅✅✅. Polkadot’s DOT also has very strong utility with the need for auctions to acquire parachain slots, but has no deflationary mechanisms, no fixed capped supply and already valued at $3.8 billion, therefore scores ✅✅. Cosmos’s ATOM token is only for the Cosmos Hub, of which there will be many hubs in the ecosystem and has very little utility currently. (this may improve once IBC is released and if Cosmos hub actually becomes the hub that people want to connect to and not something like Binance instead. There is no fixed capped supply and currently valued at $1.1 Billion, so scores ✅.
https://preview.redd.it/mels7myawpq51.png?width=1000&format=png&auto=webp&s=df9782e2c0a4c26b61e462746256bdf83b1fb906
All three are excellent projects and have similarities as well as many differences. Just to reiterate this article is not intended to be an extensive in-depth list, but rather an overview based on some of the criteria that I feel are most important. For a more in-depth view I recommend reading the articles for each of the projects linked above and coming to your own conclusions, you may have different criteria which is important to you, and score them differently. There won’t be one platform to rule them all however, with some uses cases better suited to one platform over another, and it’s not a zero-sum game. Blockchain is going to completely revolutionize industries and the Internet itself. The more projects researching and delivering breakthrough technology the better, each learning from each other and pushing each other to reach that goal earlier. The current market is a tiny speck of what’s in store in terms of value and adoption and it’s going to be exciting to watch it unfold.
https://preview.redd.it/dbb99egcwpq51.png?width=1388&format=png&auto=webp&s=aeb03127dc0dc74d0507328e899db1c7d7fc2879
For more information see the articles below (each with additional sources at the bottom of their articles)
Avalanche, a Revolutionary Consensus Engine and Platform. A Game Changer for Blockchain
Avalanche Consensus, The Biggest Breakthrough since Nakamoto
Cosmos — An Early In-Depth Analysis — Part One
Cosmos — An Early In-Depth Analysis — Part Two
Cosmos Hub ATOM Token and the commonly misunderstood staking tokens — Part Three
Polkadot — An Early In-Depth Analysis — Part One — Overview and Benefits
Polkadot — An Early In-Depth Analysis — Part Two — How Consensus Works
Polkadot — An Early In-Depth Analysis — Part Three — Limitations and Issues

This is the 1-month follow-up to my previous post about bot trading on 3Commas you can find it here: https://www.reddit.com/passive\_income/comments/i2zfjd/31\_daily\_return\_algorithm\_bot\_trading\_3commas/
Since my last post, I have now officially been running the algorithm trading on 3Commas for 1 month and I am blown away by the results. My portfolio increased from 1267$ to 1568$ In 1 month giving me 301$ in profit at the same time I have also earned 0.02511 BTC increasing both my dollar value and the BTC value of the portfolio.

Market performance in test period (1st of August – 1st of September)

Okay so cross referencing whether I’ve been better off just buying BTC and HODLING? In the period where I started from the 1st of August until the moment of writing this (September 1st) BTC only increased 0,627% meaning I outperformed the market with 20,8% in USD terms (Portfolio Performance)! Great news AND my BTC value increased significantly.

Benefits of trading bots

· Bots make it easy to enter the industry (Since you are not actively managing or updating the algorithms, which can get quite complex)
· Ensuring efficiency across the board (Bots never sleep and don’t make mistakes)
· Trading on a 24-hour basis (Especially useful in the crypto space since the markets never close unlike the stock exchange)
· Removing emotions from the equation (You won’t make the emotional YOLO all-in on a crypto/stock that you subjectively like over other, the bot simply follows algorithms and orders and execute)

How to get started?

You can sign up to 3Commas here for your own free 3 days trial period and if you choose to extend you will get a 10% discount and I will get a small commission, so win-win :-). I made a combination of two composite Gordon bots. A Binance BTC Conservative strategy (Safe & Slow) (50%) of portfolio and a Binance BTC Aggressive (Riskier & Fast) (50%) of portfolio. The aggressive bot was outperforming the conservative bot in terms of profit, but of course is more subdue to big volatility.
I have also modified my strategy Increasing the amount of trades my bots currently perform I have two Aggressive bots one using BTC and one using USDT. In total I usually have 9 active trading 24/7 and now earn around 25$ per day so expecting my return to exponentially grow as I optimize my bots. Hit me up if you need setup help and I’ll gladly support you first make an account here.
​
Current bot trades

What exchange? Okex

I used Binance initially as 3Commas integrated perfectly with Binance and they are a trusted exchange with low fees. The base fee for trades on Binance is 0.1% for makers and takers. You can reduce that by 25% (that is, to 0.075%) if you hold BNB on Binance, so this is definitely a trick I recommend!. If you don’t have a Binance account you can sign up here and we both get 10% of each other’s trading volume (You will benefit from my continued trades on Binance).
However, on the 11th of August I made the transfer over to Okex due to 3Commas making an exclusive deal with Okex giving 100 USDT free in trading fees for new sign-ups giving me a much higher margin on my first trades on that platform. Okex is also highly recommended an have fantastic customer support that answers your question within 30 seconds guaranteed! I can only highly recommend Okex and you can get 10$ in free Bitcoins using this link
Sign up to 3Commas here(Free trial + 10% discount): https://3commas.io/?c=Reddit Sign up to Okex here: https://www.okex.com/join/1/2123821

Questions?

I would love to help anyone interested in getting started with this as it seems like a great passive income stream as I used 15 minutes per day on this bot and earned 0,02511 BTC ≈ 300 USD so far and still counting.

https://preview.redd.it/f13t8gy0c3w51.png?width=640&format=png&auto=webp&s=cfd61579208acfa14248c3e79908631db6590a6d
The price of Bitcoin (BTC) made another attempt to gain momentum above $ 13,400 against the US Dollar and managed to break above the 13,500 level. At the time of this writing, BTC was trading at $ 13,835.
Bitcoin experienced a pullback the day before, dropping below $ 13,000. The leading cryptocurrency found support at close to $ 12,800. The price is currently above the $ 13,800 zone. BTC had to gain traction above $ 13,200 to hit $ 13,500. In fact, this happened. The upward momentum that the bitcoin (BTC) price has experienced recently has spread, as it usually does, to the rest of the cryptocurrencies in the market. However, while the major altcoins have risen in value against the dollar, the story has been different when compared to BTC now you can have the latest news and blog posts about crypto and blockchain delivered to your mobile phone download the app Mickael Mosse”.
In its most recent weekly report, published on Monday, the firm Glassnode highlights how the bull market has given a greater boost to bitcoin than to other major cryptocurrencies: ether (ETH) from Ethereum, bitcoin cash (BCH), chainlink (LINK ), polkadot (DOT), ripple (XRP) and binance coin (BNB).
The price of BTC can be seriously corrected
According to top cryptocurrency analyst, around the corner is a 'candle from hell' that will crush the recent cryptocurrency rally and potentially spark a change.
According to cryptocurrency analyst and trader, Bitcoin may fall. Garner shared a chart with an indicator warning traders. Garner points to two previous examples, both of which occurred after the first cryptocurrency recovered a significant resistance level as support.
The first candle that Garner mentioned took place just before the cryptocurrency halving event in May 2020. The bullish event is considered the change in supply that caused valuations to skyrocket. The second candle came in early August, a month that sent altcoins into extreme acceleration. Bitcoin continued to cut back, and then fell to $ 10,000 where a new critical test was conducted.
The bullish confirmation was what helped Bitcoin climb to $ 12,000 and to current levels in the middle of $ 13,000. Garner says that if we go one "step" further, the price of bitcoin is likely to fall, at least in the very near term. The third candle may upset crypto investors who, despite many difficulties, are excited after such an incredible rally.
Analysts make different comments
Analysts make different statements about what will be next for the leading cryptocurrency. While many are confident that Bitcoin remains in a long-term uptrend, there are indications that a short-term pullback is possible.
Bitcoin rose to $ 13,800 in a flow of buying volume. This brings the cryptocurrency to its highest level of the year. The highest level in the last 2 years is $ 13,950. The techniques state that withdrawal or at least a consolidation is possible. An analyst recently shared the chart below, noting that Bitcoin's two-day Sequential is currently at the '9 sell' candle. This indicates that the cryptocurrency will peak in the short term.
A startup account with many followers on Twitter, Magic said that if the price of BTC increases to $ 14,000, it will force $ 20,000. If BTC exceeds $ 20,000 in mid-2021, the price could rise to a region between $ 65,000 and $ 80,000.

EXPERIMENT - Tracking Top 10 Cryptos of 2019 - Month Eighteen - UP +26%
See the full blog post with all the tables here.
tl;dr - Tether (as it's designed to do) holds its ground, all others finish the month in negative territory. Tron finishes June in second place, down -2%. BSV loses nearly 25% of value in June. Overall, since January 2019, BTC in lead, ETH takes over second place, XRP still worst performing. The 2019 Top 10 is up +26% almost equal to the the gains of the S&P 500 over the same time period (+24%).

Month Eighteen – UP 26%

Not a great month for the 2019 Top Ten
After a strong April and a mixed May, June was bloody for the 2019 Top Ten Cryptos. Stablecoin Tether was the only crypto to hold its ground, as it was designed to do.

Question of the month:

According to a June article citing unnamed sources, which two FinTech companies are planning to allow their users to buy and sell crypto directly?

A) Paypal and Venmo B) Square and Cashapp C) Robinhood and Revolut D) Sofi and Coinbase
Scroll down for the answer.

Ranking and June Winners and Losers

XRP and Stellar slipped one place each in the rankings in June, now at #4 and #14 respectively. EOS fell two spots to #11 and joins Stellar and Tron as the only three cryptos to have dropped out of the 2019 Top Ten since January 1st, 2019. They have been replaced by Binance Coin, Cardano, and newcomer CRO.
Tether was the only crypto to move up in rank in June.
Not a good sign when Tether is the only crypto to move up.
Not a good sign when Tether enters the Top 3.
June Winners – Tether. Second comes Tron, which basically held its ground at -2%.
June Losers – BSV lost -23% of its value in June making it the worst performing of the 2019 Top Ten portfolio. EOS had a rough month as well, down -17%, dropping two spots in the rankings, and falling out of the Top Ten.
If you’re keeping score, here is tally of which coins have the most monthly wins and loses during the first 18 months of the 2019 Top Ten Experiment: Tether is still in the lead with six monthly victories followed by BSV in second place with three. BSV also holds the most monthly losses, finishing last in seven out of eighteen months. The only crypto not to win a month so far? XRP. (In fairness, XRP has also not lost any month yet).

Overall update – BTC in lead, ETH takes over second place, XRP still worst performing

BTC is out front for the second straight month and ETH has taken over second place from BSV. Ahead until April, BSV has simply not keep up with the pack over the last two months. Bitcoin is up +144% since January 2019. The initial $100 investment in BTC is currently worth $249.
Eighteen months in, 50% of the 2019 Top Ten cryptos are in the green since the beginning of the experiment. The other five cryptos are either flat or in negative territory, including last place XRP (down -50% since January 2019).

Total Market Cap for the entire cryptocurrency sector:

The crypto market as a whole is down about $20B in June, but still up +106% since January 2019.

Bitcoin dominance:

BitDom finally wobbled in June, but not by much – it’s been in a very familiar zone for months now, indicating a lack of excitement (or at least a low risk tolerance) for altcoins. Taking a wider view, the Bitcoin Dominance range since the beginning of the experiment in January 2019 has ranged between 50%-70%.

Overall return on investment since January 1st, 2019:

The 2019 Top Ten Portfolio lost almost $175 in June. After the initial $1000 investment, the 2019 group of Top Ten cryptos is worth $1,259. That’s up about +26%.
Here’s a look at the ROI over the life of the first 18 months of the 2019 Top Ten Index Fund experiment, month by month:
18 months of ROI, mostly green
Unlike the completely red table you’ll see in the 2018 Top Ten Experiment, the 2019 crypto table is almost all green. The first month was the lowest point (-9%), and the highest point (+114%) was May 2019.
How does the 2019 Top Ten Index Fund Portfolio compare to the parallel projects?

• 2018 Top Ten Experiment: down -81% ($187)
• 2020 Top Ten Experiment: up +26.3% ($1,264)

Taking the three portfolios together, here’s the bottom bottom bottom line:
After a $3000 investment in the 2018, 2019, and 2020 Top Ten Cryptocurrencies, the combined portfolios are worth $2,710‬.
That’s down about -10% for the three combined portfolios. Last month that figure was +4%. Better than a few months ago (aka the zombie apocalypse) where it was down -24%, but not yet back at January (+13%) or February (+6%) levels.
Here’s a new table to help visualize the progress of the combined portfolios:
ROI of all three combined portfolios - not exactly inspiring
How do crypto returns compare to traditional markets?

Comparison to S&P 500:

Good thing I’m tracking the S&P 500 as part of my experiment to have a comparison point with other popular investments options. Even with unemployment, protests, and COVID, the US market continued to rebound in June. It’s now up +24% in the last 18 months.
The initial $1k investment I put into crypto would be worth $1,240 had it been redirected to the S&P 500 in January 2019.
As a reminder (or just scroll up) the 2019 Top Ten portfolio is returning +26% over last 18 months, just about equal to the return of the S&P 500 over the same time period. Just last month the ROI of the 2019 Top Ten crypto portfolio was nearly double the S&P 500 since January 1st, 2019.
But what if I took the same world’s-slowest-dollar-cost-averaging/$1,000-per-year-in-January approach with the S&P 500? It would yield the following:

• $1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2018: +$170
• $1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2019: +$240
• $1000 investment in S&P 500 on January 1st, 2020: -$40

Taken together, here’s the bottom bottom bottom line for a similar approach with the S&P:
After three $1,000 investments into an S&P 500 index fund in January 2018, 2019, and 2020, my portfolio would be worth $3,370.
That $3,370 is up over+12% since January 2018, compared to the $2,710 value (-10%) of the combined Top Ten Crypto Experiment Portfolios. Here’s another new table that compares the ROI of the combined crypto portfolios to a hypothetical similar approach with the S&P 500:
We see in June the largest difference in favor of the S&P since the beginning of 2020: a 22% gap. Compare that February, when there was only a 1% difference in ROI.

Implications/Observations:

Since January 2019, the crypto market as a whole has gained +106% compared to the 2019 Top Ten Crypto Portfolio which has gained +26%. That’s an 80% gap.
At this point in the 2019 Experiment, an investor would have done much better picking different cryptos or investing in the entire market instead of focusing only on the 2019 Top Ten. Over the course of the first 18 months of tracking the 2019 Top Ten, there have been instances this was a winning strategy, but the cases have been few and far between.
The 2018 Top Ten portfolio, on the other hand, has never outperformed the overall market, at least not in the first thirty months of that Experiment.
And for the most recent 2020 Top Ten group? The opposite had been true: the 2020 Top Ten had easily outperformed the overall market 100% of the time…up until the last two months.

Conclusion:

As the world continues to battle COVID, traditional markets seem to be recovering. Will crypto make a significant move in the second half of 2020?
Final word: Stay safe and take care of each other.
Thanks for reading and for supporting the experiment. I hope you’ve found it helpful. I continue to be committed to seeing this process through and reporting along the way. Feel free to reach out with any questions and stay tuned for progress reports. Keep an eye out for the original 2018 Top Ten Crypto Index Fund Experiment and the recently launched 2020 Top Ten Experiment.

And the Answer is…

A) Paypal and Venmo
According to a Coindesk report in June, three sources familiar with the matter say that Paypal and Paypal-owned Venmo are planning to allow their users to buy and sell crypto. Paypal has declined to comment.

Bitcoin is running at full speed now. Especially yesterday, in just 24 hours, the world’s largest cryptocurrency rose by nearly $ 1,500. How come things suddenly go so fast? And what is the ceiling of this run?
You look at the daily chart below. Since May, bitcoin has been moving in an upward channel, between two upward trend lines. The price has scraped against the top of this channel in recent days, and a correction was therefore expected. It never came, on the contrary. Bitcoin shot through the top trendline with a lot of violence yesterday.
https://preview.redd.it/sbweuedwlsx51.jpg?width=753&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d989250cd71129ae90ff0068cb9b8f4e162a0d57
But the daily chart doesn’t give you the full picture. To understand why things are going so fast now, we look at the monthly chart. The last strong resistance was USD 13,853, the green line. This was the highest monthly closing price ever, the first red arrow. In 2019 it was not possible to break this level. You can see that by the second red arrow. And the third arrow indicates that bitcoin just failed to close the month above this resistance.
https://preview.redd.it/8ox3zfoxlsx51.jpg?width=804&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2ac67cf45bab75ec836da32b8f4f928b4cf1ad41
Final hurdle towards all-time high
Where is the next resistance for bitcoin? For this, we switch to the weekly chart. The next resistance can be found around 16,170 dollars, the lower green line on the graph. On the chart you can see that this price has been a significant resistance at the beginning of 2018. And above that? There we come very close to the highest value of bitcoin ever. So, around $ 16,000, bitcoin finds the last real resistance towards the top.
https://preview.redd.it/3vfnviizlsx51.jpg?width=759&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ffe375f92e8f278c89a7d9618c3d752b01761b46
The market is overly optimistic.
But before we talk bitcoin towards $ 25,000, it is good to take a step back and look at the market sentiment. According to the Alternative’s Fear & Greed Index, there is extreme greed right now. This figure has not been this high since June 2019.
https://preview.redd.it/x8w3lfk0msx51.jpg?width=652&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a8ae228cf919ca0fd014b9316d918d669e8a8640
The Fear & Greed Index is an index between 0 and 100 and gives you information about the market sentiment. The figure is a weighted average of all kinds of factors in the market, such as volatility of the price, trading volume, sentiment on social media, and bitcoin’s market dominance.
Currently, the counter is at 90, which means that there is massive greed in the market. This is often a sign that the market needs to cool down a bit. Before we make another move up, the price must correct or move sideways for a while.
What can we expect from bitcoin?
Back to the daily bitcoin chart. The price is gaining momentum. All scenarios are still on the table. To prepare you for everything, we outline two scenarios: bullish (positive) and bearish (negative).
Bullish
Will bitcoin take it one step further in the coming days? We find the first resistance at USD 16,170, which corresponds to the weekly closing price of January 2018. After that, USD 18,964 is in sight, the highest ever weekly closing price of bitcoin.
Bearish
In recent days, bitcoin has risen sharply in value. A correction is, therefore, also a possible scenario. The first support is the top of the channel, around $ 14,600. If there is a massive correction, bitcoin can drop back to 12,000 dollars. As long as the price finds support at the bottom of the rising channel, the upward trend will remain intact.