How to use the Bitcoin investment calculator
The page has three tools. None of them contain built-in price history: you enter the prices, so the results are exactly as reliable as the prices you use.
Lump sum values one purchase.
- Enter the amount you invested in dollars, including the purchase fee, and how many years you have held it. Fractions work: 1.5 years is 18 months.
- Enter the price per bitcoin when you bought. Your exchange’s trade history shows the actual fill price, which is better than a price you remember from a chart.
- Enter today’s price, or any price you want to test. The default prices are hypothetical round numbers, not real market data.
- Enter the fees. The purchase fee reduces the bitcoin you receive. The sale fee is applied to the value, as if you sold today; enter 0 to see the value without selling.
What if it changes starts from what you hold now. Enter your bitcoin, or its dollar value, the current price and optionally what you paid, then a price change to test. The table runs the standard set from −80% to +300%.
Pasted history takes rows in the form YYYY-MM-DD, price. Paste a column of dates and prices from a spreadsheet, enter the amount for a dollar-cost averaging comparison, and the tool measures the period from the first row to the last. The default rows are labelled as fictional and are there only to show the format.
The formulas
Value = BTC owned × Price × (1 − Sale fee)
Multiple = Value ÷ Amount
CAGR = Multiple1 ÷ Years − 1
Break-even price = Amount ÷ [BTC owned × (1 − Sale fee)]Fees are percentages used as decimals. One BTC is 100,000,000 satoshis. In the pasted tool, years are counted from the first date to the last as days ÷ 365.25.
For the pasted history, the largest fall from a peak (maximum drawdown) is the worst drop from any earlier high to a later low among the rows you pasted. The dollar-cost averaging comparison buys the same dollar amount at every row’s price and compares the result with investing the same total at the first row.
A worked example
Suppose you put $5,000 into bitcoin at a hypothetical $50,000 per coin, paying a 1% fee. You receive 0.099 BTC, or 9,900,000 sats.
At $80,000 the coins are worth $7,920.00. After a 0.5% fee for selling, you would have $7,880.40: a gain of $2,880.40, a +57.61% return and a multiple of 1.58×. Held for 3 years, that is a CAGR of +16.37%.
The price itself rose 60.00%, more than your return, because the fees took $89.60. The break-even price is $50,758.84.
Why the holding period changes the story
The same multiple means very different things depending on how long it took. The table under the Lump sum results shows this for your figures:
| Years held | Annualized return for the same 1.58× multiple |
|---|---|
| 1 year | +57.61% |
| 3 years | +16.37% |
| 10 years | +4.65% |
A headline like “up 57.61%” sounds the same whether it took one year or ten. The CAGR turns it into a yearly rate you can set against a savings account, a bond yield or a stock index over the same years. The CAGR calculator does the same conversion for any investment.
How much the fees matter
Fees on Bitcoin purchases vary widely between platforms. Exchanges with an order book often charge a fraction of a percent, while instant-buy screens and card purchases can charge several percent, sometimes partly hidden in the quoted price.
| Fees on the example | Value | Total return |
|---|---|---|
| No fees | $8,000.00 | +60.00% |
| 1% to buy, 0.5% to sell | $7,880.40 | +57.61% |
| 3% to buy, 0.5% to sell | $7,721.20 | +54.42% |
A fee is paid whether the price goes up or down. On a holding that has not moved, it is the whole loss.
Testing falls and rises
The second tool is a way to think through scenarios before they happen, not a forecast. Bitcoin’s price has fallen by more than half from a peak several times in its history, and it has also risen many times over. Both ends of the table are worth reading.
With the example holding of 0.25 BTC at $80,000, the default -30% scenario takes the value from $20,000.00 to $14,000.00. An 80% fall would leave $4,000.00, while a doubling would give $40,000.00. If you paid $15,000 in total, your break-even price is $60,000.00, so the price could fall 25.00% before the holding is worth less than you put in.
Recovering from a fall takes a larger percentage rise than the fall itself: after an 80% drop, the price has to rise 400% just to get back to where it was. The drawdown recovery calculator shows that relationship for any loss.
Using your own price history
The third tool answers “what if” questions with real data you supply. In the fictional example rows, the price goes from $20,000 to $44,100 over 2.00 years, a return of +120.50% and a CAGR of +48.45%. On the way, it falls as much as 27.2% from a high.
Buying $100 at each of the 25 rows ends at $3,555.83, against $5,484.94 for investing the same $2,500.00 at the first price. In this made-up uptrend, the lump sum wins; in a period that starts with a fall, the order often reverses. The crypto DCA calculator looks at a buying plan in more detail.
Two practical points: drawdown is measured only at the rows you paste, so monthly data misses falls that recovered within the month, and each row is treated as one purchase in the DCA comparison, whatever the spacing between dates.
What this calculator does not include
- Price data. No historical or live prices are built in. The results depend entirely on the prices you enter.
- Taxes. In the US, selling bitcoin at a gain is generally a taxable capital gain. The crypto tax calculator estimates it.
- Spreads, transfer and network fees, unless you include them in the percentages.
- Income from lending or staking, which bitcoin itself does not pay; any such product carries its own counterparty risk.
- Risk. Past price changes, real or hypothetical, do not predict future ones. Bitcoin is volatile, and a holding can lose most of its value.