What if you'd been buying Bitcoin every month?

It shows what a fixed monthly bitcoin purchase would be worth today. Dollar-cost averaging, in the SEC's investor-education definition, means "investing your money in equal portions, at regular intervals, regardless of the ups and downs in the market", so you buy more when the price is low and less when it is high (Investor.gov).

Pick a monthly amount and a starting year. The simulator buys once a month at the opening price of the month's first day, from January of that year to October 2026, and values the coins at the latest daily close. You can add a fee per purchase; taxes are not modelled.

Current value is what the bitcoin bought would sell for at the latest close, before any fees or tax on the sale. Profit or loss compares that with the total you put in. BTC accumulated and the average cost per bitcoin show how much each dollar bought: when your average cost sits below today's price, the plan is in profit.

The 2025 row is the reminder. Bitcoin peaked at about $126,000 on 6 October 2025 (Fortune) and fell to about $57,700 on 1 July 2026 (CoinDesk), so a plan that started in January 2025 was still under water in mid-October 2026. Past prices say nothing certain about future ones.

Prices come from the Coinbase Exchange candles API for BTC-USD, a US dollar spot order book, at daily granularity in UTC. We pulled every daily candle from 1 January 2017 to 16 October 2026 on 16 October 2026, found no missing days, and use the open of each month's first day: 118 months in all. The valuation price is the close of 15 October 2026, because the 16 October candle was still open. Coinbase notes that historical rate data may be incomplete, so we re-pull the full series at each refresh.

Not on average, if you already have the money. FINRA says dollar-cost averaging "often produces lower returns than lump sum investing, especially over longer periods of time", and can cost more in fees because you trade more often. Vanguard's 2023 study found that investing a lump sum at once beat phasing it in over a few months about two-thirds of the time.

What DCA buys you is less timing risk. FINRA notes that it can help limit your losses in a significant market decline and "remove some of the emotion from investing". If you invest from your salary each month, the lump-sum question doesn't arise: buying on a schedule is simply what you are doing.

• Exchange fees. Kraken charges a 1% fee on recurring trades plus a spread. Coinbase does not publish a recurring-buy rate: its fee depends on payment method, order size and location and shows in the order preview, on top of a spread. Use the fee calculator to compare exchanges.
• US tax. Each purchase is a separate lot with its own date and cost basis, and the IRS counts the fees you pay as part of that basis. When you sell part of your holding, units are treated as sold first in, first out unless you specifically identify them.
• Broker reporting. For lots bought on or after 1 January 2026 and kept on the same platform, US brokers also report your cost basis to the IRS when you sell, which makes keeping each recurring buy on one exchange simpler at tax time.