Crypto Investment Calculator

What this tool assumes

Crypto investment growth follows the same compounding math as any other asset. The tool applies an annual return rate you specify to a starting principal over your chosen horizon. It does not fetch live prices, does not model volatility, and does not predict future crypto performance. It translates your assumption about future return into a projected end value and total gain.

How the math works

Final value is the principal multiplied by one plus the annual return, raised to the number of years. Total return is the final value minus the principal. The annualised growth rate is simply the figure entered, not something the tool derives. Because the model has no path dependency, the final value is an idealised terminal number rather than a forecast. The same long-run annualised return can be reached through paths that look nothing alike year to year, and a fall late in the holding period leaves a very different balance from the smooth line drawn here.

Why volatility matters more than the average

Crypto's annualised volatility has historically run far above equity markets, often several times higher. At that level a position can sit well below its starting value at many points along the way even when the long-run annualised return is positive. The smooth projection here approximates the outcome for a position held untouched to the end of the period. It says nothing about the path, so for anyone who might need the money before then it understates the chance of selling into a drawdown.

How to pick a realistic return assumption

Historical crypto returns are unusually high partly because the asset class is young and has passed through several price-discovery phases. Bitcoin's lifetime annualised return has been extraordinary, but that figure includes the earliest near-zero-cost years, which are not a period that can repeat. Rolling ten-year annualised returns have varied widely depending on which window is measured. Whatever figure goes in the box is an assumption about the future rather than a measurement of the past, and carrying a past annualised return forward assumes the conditions that produced it persist. Running the projection at more than one rate shows the spread that a single number hides.

What the tool does not model

Specifically excluded: tax on gains (capital gains treatment varies significantly by jurisdiction), exchange and withdrawal fees, spread between buy and sell prices on illiquid tokens, the impact of specific events (halvings, forks, protocol changes), and correlation with macro factors. A fuller picture combines this projection with scenario analysis across low and high return cases, and nets realistic transaction costs out of the gross result.