My friends, I'm so embarrassed to show you this crypto portfolio today, which is the majority of the crypto I have. I also have about $4,000 in Gods Unchained NFTs I've bought recently. Why is this embarrassing to me? Because I've been in crypto since 2014. I've bought Bitcoin as low as $170. And this to me looks like just utter failure.
I've made this portfolio over the last 100 days by dollar cost averaging into whichever crypto I think is the best each day. And if I can isolate one thing I hope you get out of this, it's that dollar cost averaging is the way to win and to make a long term plan. I have this shitty little portfolio today instead of being a crypto millionaire because I didn't make a long term plan. And I sold. I sold when my gains were too small.
The Millionaire I Talked Myself Out Of Being
I remember in 2017, I felt like a genius having turned my $50 a day into Bitcoin into almost $100,000. I felt real smart selling all of it at the top, which was $1,800 for Bitcoin at the time. And I did a similar run in 2018, sold about $100,000 more. I felt so smart. And then it's been years of feeling stupid since then.
There's a key lesson in here that I'll show you in the data. I feel really dumb every day because in 2016, I made a video saying the ideal strategy that I was doing was to buy $50 a day in Bitcoin. Just literally put on a repeat buy every day. And then maybe consider selling some when the price went over $1,000, and held on to it. I would have put in $126,000 and today I'd have over a million dollars in Bitcoin.
But that's not the biggest deal. Yeah, having over a million dollars in Bitcoin would be cool. I actually had over 60 Bitcoin at one point. So that wouldn't even be as much. I accumulated 60 Bitcoin within a year of starting my DCA strategy by trading into altcoins and pumping altcoins. But I took the gains instead of holding on for the long term ride.
But that's not the worst part. The worst part is all the time I would have had, because I would have just made a million dollars doing almost nothing. I could have worked and easily afforded to put at least $50 a day into Bitcoin, had a million dollars of Bitcoin right now, and saved myself thousands of hours that I spent researching altcoins, pumping altcoins, and sacrificing my YouTube channel to pump all these altcoins up. I'm not going to lie. I would have got way more with almost no effort at all.
And I was in on Ethereum in 2016. I was on this right away. I'm like, this is awesome. I remember using that original ETH wallet. I easily could have afforded to DCA $50 a day into Ethereum as well as Bitcoin, and I'd have 691 ETH today. I'd have over a million dollars in Ethereum. And again, I wouldn't have had to do anything except set the buy. And I would have had so much free time.
Why My Experience Is The Most Valuable Thing I Have
Every day when I do crypto, that's in the background, and I'm like, man, this little shitty portfolio is proof that I'm an idiot. And yet the amazing part is that I'm able to keep showing up. And I realize that my experience is the most valuable thing I have to offer. Most people have not been through this long of a journey in crypto yet. And I see that this opportunity will present itself again, exactly what happened before. If you could look seven years into the future, I bet the same situation is going to happen again. I don't know if the gains will be this high, but the same setup is coming on both Bitcoin and Ethereum. So to me, this is why Bitcoin and Ethereum are the top two things in my portfolio. I've got 15% in Bitcoin, 15% in ETH.
The Math On Beating Bitcoin By 6%
Now, somebody said the other day, because I've been saying that my portfolio is up 30%, rounded up slightly, just DCAing $50 a day. My portfolio is up 30% since I've started. Now, some smartass came along and said, well, Jerry, you could have just bought Bitcoin and ETH and you could have got 30%. So I checked the numbers. If I had just DCAed Bitcoin every day from December 2022 until now, I would have a $5,600 portfolio on $4,500 put in, and I'd be up about 23%. So me choosing some of these altcoins to buy in, I have gotten 6% better returns than buying Bitcoin.
That said, 6% is not a hell of a lot on $7,000. So you're looking at 1% of $7,000, about $73, so call it about $500. And I've taken hundreds of hours of research on altcoins, watching video after video, reading, looking at explorers and all these websites and Discord servers and Telegram servers. Jesus, I put so much time in to beat Bitcoin by 6%.
Now, alternatively, if I had split between Bitcoin and Ethereum, so far I would have gotten much smaller returns just DCAing into Ethereum. And in fact, with Ethereum being the biggest position in my portfolio, DCAing into Ethereum has actually slowed the entire 30% down significantly. If I had not bought any Ethereum, and instead bought more Bitcoin and some of these other higher performing altcoins, we'd be up even more. If I just DCAed into Ethereum, though, I'd only be up 13% instead of 30%. So yeah, that's double my money. But again, we're talking about a difference here of a little over $1,000 or so, maybe $800. So if you cut this in half, I'd be up about $800.
What Is My Time Actually Worth?
Now, imagine the time saved. Time is often very scarce for me. I have a full schedule. I've got this studio. I'm a YouTuber. I stream on Twitch. I have a wife and kids. I go to yoga and AA most days during the week. I see my mother almost every day. I have a lot to do. Now, could I afford to sacrifice $800 in exchange for over 100 hours of time? I've calculated now that if I wasn't a crypto YouTuber, all the time I put into researching these altcoins would come out to about $5 an hour or less compared to just DCAing into Bitcoin and Ethereum.
So the takeaway is this: in terms of time, you get a lot more out of your money by keeping it simple. If you start to think about living a life of self-sufficiency, just DCAing into Bitcoin and Ethereum every day, then for me, if the past repeats itself, that is going to produce great returns, maybe not this great, but great returns with very little effort. The time it takes to dump money and hours into researching all these altcoins is not worth it. In my experience, Bitcoin and Ethereum are going to do good enough returns by themselves.
Now, for me as a crypto YouTuber, that's got me thinking, maybe I need to stop pissing so much of my time away reviewing altcoins that y'all don't even want to hear about and that I don't even like. So I'm going to test some different strategies on my channel going forward. I do have my spreadsheet where I share what I'm buying each day, and I hope that helps you see my top portfolio allocations. I hope this helps you feel better, because I know some of you feel really bad about what you could have had and all the missed opportunities in crypto. And I'm here to let you know that's normal. That's very normal.
The Question I'm Asking Myself Now
The key question I'm asking myself now is, what do I value? Is it worth trying to hit some higher returns in exchange for my time? Or maybe I spend less time researching crypto and less time cranking out all these altcoin videos, and I just occasionally buy something besides Bitcoin and ETH. I bought some XRP today. Maybe I DCA a little bit into some other altcoins. But is it really worth the time? I don't know.
Let me show you my gains. This is where I've done really well. I'm up 42% on my Bitcoin buys and 31% on my ETH buys in terms of profit. Now, DSO and Internet Computer have sucked so far, but I think those are undervalued. The best gains I've got are on Hedera and Zen. I've done really well on both of those, also Immutable X. So I've certainly picked out some winners, but these were pretty easy. Joe Parys made a video about Zen. I watched his video, and I'm like, yes, let me go ahead and buy that right now. And Hedera, I saw that, and it was a quick and easy buy that didn't take much research. Immutable X, I was already using it. And Solana went under $10, and I'm like, all right, that's pretty obvious. I might pick up some more Solana soon.
I needed to have this conversation because I think it'll help you today. If you want to get more from my experience and get help going through this journey with me, the best way to work with me on it now is to join the Jerry Banfield Family. We talk through what I'm buying, what I'm holding, and why, and I'd love to see you in there. If you want to keep digging on individual coins, you can also go through my Crypto Reviews playlist and see how I think about each one.
I'm also going to shorten my pitches. I listened back to all my videos, and I'm like, oh my God, I'm really pushing too hard. So I'm going to make sure the quality of my videos is great and that they don't end with a two or three minute pitch. And if not, I'll be back every day continuing to try and make the best crypto videos I can for you. Thanks a lot for watching, and I'd love to see your portfolio. Have a great day, and I'll see you tomorrow.