About $37 into Bitcoin every week for 5 years
This is the estimated result of investing about $37 into Bitcoin every week for 5 years, from January 2021 to January 2026. Could you have endured an -80% drawdown?
Investment conditions summary
Jan 2021 – Jan 2026 (5 years)
about $37 / week
Bitcoin (BTC)
Recurring weekly purchase
⚠️ All results below are estimates based on past data and are shown pre-tax. Reflecting fees, exchange rates, and taxes may make actual results differ.
Total principal invested (estimate)
about $9.6k
5 years × 52 weeks × ~$37 ≈ $9.6k
Ending value (estimate, pre-tax)
about $46k
pre-tax, fees not reflected (estimate). Based on actual exchange spot prices.
Cumulative return (estimate, pre-tax)
+377%
A high return, but the volatility is extreme too
Maximum drawdown (MDD)
-80%
2022 basis. A stretch where $4 of every $5 vanished.
Maximum drawdown period: Nov 2021 – Nov 2022
-80%
About 30 months to recover
Bitcoin's -80% maximum drawdown means that $4 of every $5 invested vanished. Enduring this period is far harder than it looks on paper.
A 5-year roller coaster: rise → crash → recovery
When it began in January 2021, Bitcoin was around $30k per coin. It then rose to an all-time high of about $61k in November 2021.
But from 2022, a crash began as global tightening and a broad collapse of the crypto market (the Luna implosion, the FTX bankruptcy) piled up. In November 2022, Bitcoin fell to about $12k, recording an -80% drawdown from the peak.
Someone who kept up the ~$37-a-week investment during this stretch continued buying Bitcoin at very low prices. In 2023–2024, expectations for a Bitcoin ETF and the actual approval (January 2024) combined with the halving effect, and Bitcoin set a new high in March 2024.
After 5 years, the estimated value is about $46k (pre-tax) — roughly 4.8 times the total of about $9.6k invested.
Could you have endured -80%?
The key question in this story is not "+377% over 5 years." It is "could you have held on in 2022 when your account was down -80%?"
At some point during the ~$37-a-week investment, your account balance falls to about 20% of the invested principal. In that state — "will I still put in another $37 next week?" — most people could not.
Bitcoin plays by different rules than traditional financial assets. Its correlation with the stock market has been rising, but it carries risks that stocks do not: regulatory risk, technology risk, hacking risk, and more. This service does not recommend investing in Bitcoin.
Calculate it yourself
The results above are estimates. Calculate them yourself with your own conditions (amount, period, asset).
Calculate it yourself in the recurring-investment simulator📋 Results are based on historical data; past returns do not guarantee future returns.
📋 This service is provided for educational purposes to help you understand investing, not as investment advice.
⚠️ Calculated using today's representative assets, which may differ from the market composition at the time.