Crypto “What If I Had Invested” Calculator

1. Enter the amount invested, the buy price per coin on your start date and the current or sell price. You supply both prices; the tool fetches nothing.
2. Add the fees and the start and end dates. The dates turn the total return into a yearly rate.
3. Optional: list DCA buy prices to compare one lump sum with equal buys over time, and add a target price.

What each result tells you:

A crypto what-if calculation is a hindsight return: it measures what a past purchase of a crypto asset would be worth at a later price. It answers one question, "what if I had invested X at price A and held to price B".

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission defines a crypto asset as an asset that is generated, issued or transferred using a blockchain or similar distributed ledger technology network. The names "token", "digital asset", "virtual currency" and "coin" all refer to this group.

The calculation helps three kinds of people: someone checking a buy they did make, someone curious about a buy they skipped, and someone learning how ROI and CAGR work. It needs two prices and an amount.

A what-if result is not a forecast and not a reason to buy. It looks backward at one start date and one end date that you picked after the fact.

The calculator converts the amount invested into coins at the buy price, values those coins at the end price, and compares the two amounts.

1. Coins bought = amount invested, less the buy fee, divided by the buy price.
2. End value = coins x end price, less the sell fee.
3. Profit or loss = end value - amount invested. ROI = profit or loss / amount invested.
4. CAGR = (end value / amount invested) raised to the power of 1 / years, minus 1. Years = days between the dates / 365.25.
5. Break-even price = buy price / ((1 - buy fee) x (1 - sell fee)).
6. DCA: the amount is split equally across your listed prices. Coins = the sum of each equal buy divided by its price.

ROI and CAGR answer different questions. The guide on ROI vs annualized return explains when to use each one.

The prices below are made-up round numbers for an "Example coin". They are not market data for any real asset.

A person invests 1,000 on October 1, 2021 at 100 per coin and checks the value on October 1, 2026 at 250 per coin. Both fees are 1 percent.

Meaning: the money grew to 2.45 times its starting size over five years. With no fees the same buy returns exactly 150 percent, so the two 1 percent fees cost 49.75. A fall to 40 per coin instead gives a value of 392.04, a loss of 607.96 or 60.80 percent.

Five inputs decide the result. The two dates you pick matter most.

Start and End Dates

Crypto prices swing widely, so moving either date by a few weeks can turn a gain into a loss. A hindsight result describes one pair of dates. It says nothing about the dates in between.

Price Ratio

The end price divided by the buy price sets the return. A move from 100 to 1,000 is a 900 percent ROI. A move from 100 to 50 is a 50 percent loss, and the price must then double to get back to the start.

Fees and Slippage

Fees reduce the coins you receive and the cash you get back. Two 1 percent fees raise the break-even price from 100 to 102.03. Slippage is the gap between the quoted price and the price your order fills at.

Holding Period

The same ROI gives a different CAGR over a different period. A 150 percent ROI is 20.12 percent a year over five years. The tool does not annualize periods under one year, because a 50 percent gain in 92 days would annualize to about 400 percent, a number nobody earned.

Lump Sum or DCA

Splitting the money across several dates changes the average cost per coin. The result depends on the prices on those dates, not on a rule that one method always wins.

Dollar-cost averaging means investing your money in equal portions, at regular intervals, regardless of the ups and downs in the market. That is the definition used by the SEC on Investor.gov. Equal amounts buy more coins when the price is low and fewer when it is high.

The table uses the "Example with 6 DCA buys" preset: 1,200 in total, an end price of 250 and 1 percent fees. The six made-up buy prices are 100, 60, 150, 80, 200 and 120.

The six prices average 118.33, yet the DCA cost per coin is 102.43. Equal amounts weight the cheap buys more heavily. In this example the lump sum still ends slightly ahead, because its single price of 100 was below the DCA average. A lump sum bought at 200 would have ended far behind. The guide on dollar-cost averaging into crypto covers the method in depth.

Checking a Buy You Made

Enter your real buy price, fees and today's price to see where the position stands and what price breaks even. For tax lots and several trades, the guide on how to calculate crypto profit and loss goes further.

Learning from a Buy You Skipped

Run the gain you missed, then run the loss you would have taken at a worse date. Seeing both gives a fairer picture than a single lucky pair of dates.

Comparing with a Steady Rate

Take the CAGR and compare it with a fixed yearly rate in the compound interest calculator. The comparison shows the size of the return, not its risk.

1. Reading Hindsight as a Forecast

A past gain does not repeat on request. The CFTC states that there is no such thing as a guaranteed investment or trading strategy.

2. Picking Only the Best Dates

Choosing the lowest buy price and the highest sell price describes a trade almost nobody made. Test ordinary dates too.

3. Looking Only at Coins That Survived

A what-if on a coin that still trades ignores the coins that fell to near zero or stopped trading. This is survivorship bias, and it makes past returns look better than the choice was at the time.

4. Ignoring Fees and Taxes

Fees lower the result, and tax on a gain lowers it again. This tool includes the fees you enter and leaves tax out.

5. Confusing ROI with CAGR

A 145 percent ROI over five years is 19.63 percent a year, not 29 percent a year. Dividing ROI by years overstates the yearly rate.

6. Assuming You Would Have Held

The math assumes no selling during the period. A coin that fell by half along the way tests that assumption hard.

The arithmetic is exact for the numbers you type. The limits are hindsight and volatility: the tool measures one finished path and cannot say what happens next.

The SEC Office of Investor Education and Advocacy warns that crypto asset investments can be exceptionally volatile and speculative, and that the only money to put at risk in a speculative investment is money you can afford to lose entirely. The CFTC notes that the value of virtual currencies is completely derived by market forces of supply and demand, and that they are more volatile than traditional fiat currencies.

Divide the amount you invested by the buy price to get the number of coins, then multiply by the price today. 500 invested at 20 per coin is 25 coins, worth 1,000 at 40 per coin before fees.

Use the price history from the exchange you trade on or a market data site you trust, and note the date and the currency. This tool does not store or fetch prices, so the result is only as good as the price you type.

No fixed number counts as good, because crypto returns come with large swings in both directions. Compare the CAGR with what a lower-risk choice paid over the same years, and remember the result is hindsight.

CAGR compounds, so each year grows on the year before. A 150 percent ROI over five years is a CAGR of 20.12 percent, while 150 divided by 5 gives 30 percent, which is too high.

It depends on the prices on your buy dates. Dollar-cost averaging spreads the timing risk across several buys, but a lump sum bought at a low price ends ahead. Enter your own prices in the DCA field to compare.

Annualizing a period under one year assumes the same gain repeats several times, which inflates the number. A 50 percent gain in 92 days would show as about 400 percent a year.

The price needs to rise 100 percent to recover a 50 percent loss. A fall from 100 to 50 halves the value, and getting from 50 back to 100 means doubling.

No. Tax rules for crypto gains differ by country and by how long you held. Treat the profit shown as a before-tax figure and check the rules with a tax professional.

Yes. Type the price as a decimal, such as 0.000025. Prices under 1 are shown to 4 significant figures and the coin count adjusts to match.

Anyone choosing whether to buy today should not rely on it. The CFTC advises people not to invest in products they do not understand and to speculate only with money they can afford to lose.

No. The calculation runs in your browser and nothing is sent to our servers. Anything you Save stays in this browser only.

• Exercise Caution with Crypto Asset Securities: Investor Alert (U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Investor.gov, March 23, 2023).
• Customer Advisory: Understand the Risks of Virtual Currency Trading (U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission).
• Crypto Assets (U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Investor.gov: definition of a crypto asset).
• Dollar Cost Averaging (U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Investor.gov glossary).
• CAGR: Compound Annual Growth Rate (Corporate Finance Institute: formula and limits of CAGR).