8 notes · Updated 9 October 2026
Articles
Measured write-ups from the DCA engine — what the data actually shows, including the results that do not flatter Bitcoin.
Does DCA actually work?
4 notesDollar-cost averaging is usually argued from theory. These are measurements: every start date on record, how long buyers waited to break even, and what changing the plan halfway through actually cost.
You panicked, sold Bitcoin. What if you had held?
Whether selling Bitcoin left you worse off depends on when you bought back and what happened to the cash. In our fixed $50 weekly plan, a 30-day exit finished behind uninterrupted buying on 1,419 of 2,467 sell dates. Some exits won. Your dates matter more than that historical count.
8 min read
Bitcoin DCA worst case
Of 624 weekly Bitcoin start dates, 615 spent time below what they had paid in — 98.6% of them. The median plan was down 32.2% at its worst and 92 were down more than half. Yet the worst any start date has finished is 9.4% below cost.
7 min read
DCA vs lump sum
Dollar-cost averaging vs lump sum, on Bitcoin: investing the cash at once beat feeding it in over twelve months in 68.3% of 571 start dates, a median 24.4% better — though the worst 5% finished 44.3% behind. Buying weekly instead of daily moved the cost 0.02%, which is noise. Hesitating a year before starting lost in 77.5%.
11 min read
Pillar
How long have Bitcoin DCA buyers actually stayed underwater?
Across 624 weekly start dates since September 2014, 80 are below cost today — about one in eight. The deepest is down 9.4 percent. The longest any cohort spent continuously below what it had paid in was 486 days, and every one of the 624 has been above water at some point.
4 min read
Bitcoin vs everything else
3 notesThe same dollars, the same schedule, a different asset. Bitcoin against houses in your state, against a 3% CD, against the one stock that beat it.
Bitcoin College Savings
Bitcoin, a bank CD, and a 529 account are not interchangeable ways to save. A historical Bitcoin calculation can be compared with an assumed growth path, but that path is neither a CD quote nor a 529 return. The deadline, loss tolerance, account restrictions, and actual product terms still matter.
8 min read
Bitcoin vs. House Prices
Across five sampled starting dates, the start date changed the winner; the state did not. Bitcoin led every state housing index for starts in 2020, 2021, and 2022; every state led for 2024 and 2025. These retrospective index illustrations do not measure the full return from owning a home.
7 min read
Pillar
Bitcoin vs other assets
From 17 September 2014 to 1 April 2026, $50 a week — 603 purchases, $30,150 — into each of 19 of the simulator's 22 assets. Nvidia turned it into $1,963,969, or 65.2× what went in. Bitcoin finished 2nd at 44.5×. 14 of the 19 finished below 4×, and 3 failed to beat inflation.
8 min read
The tools and the method
1 noteHow the calculators differ, where their numbers come from, and which questions a backtest can and cannot answer.