I asked Claude to crunch some numbers on the return people got if they held bitcoin for 5 years averaged over all the 5 year periods in its history.
Here are the results across 959 overlapping 5-year windows from August 2010 through January 2026:
The headline numbers:
- Average return: 18,229% (183x your money)
- Median return: 3,108% (32x your money) — median is more representative since early periods skew the average massively
- 958 out of 959 periods were profitable (99.9%)
The one exception: If you bought on Dec 18, 2017 (near that cycle's peak at ~$18,900) and sold exactly 5 years later on Dec 16, 2022 (deep in the FTX crash bear market at ~$16,600), you lost 12%. That's the only 5-year window that lost money.
By entry year (average return):
- Early years (2010-2013) are astronomical — hundreds of thousands of percent — because you were buying at pennies/single digits
- Even the "worst" entry year with complete data (2018, buying into a bear market) still averaged 346% (4.5x)
- 2021 entries only have partial 5-year data so far (only 11 windows that have completed), but those are averaging 145% (2.4x) already
The distribution is heavily right-skewed: 46% of all 5-year holds returned between 1,000-10,000%, and 74% returned over 100%. Only one single period out of 959 lost money.
suspicious that you used 5 years all of a sudden.
Used to be 4 years (for cycle logic) but even that is pretty arbitrary. Do you wanna do another round with
a) average holding period as shown in on-chained data,
b) best and worst holding periods simulating how people actually live with money, e.g., monthly/weekly/quarterly etc
And realistically, don't start in Aug 2010 but a little later.
My hunch is that people living in bitcoin, not just OGs or DCA-and-forget-forever, say in the last 5-8 years, have not had such a good time.
I picked 5 because that's a round number that nocoiners are more used to evaluating mututal funds etc., not to cherry pick.
4 years is actually a stronger claim than 5:
1,050 out of 1,050 periods profitable (100%)
Not a single 4-year holding period in Bitcoin's history has lost money. The key comparison:
┌────────────────┬──────────────────┬─────────────────┐
│ │ 4-year hold │ 5-year hold │
├────────────────┼──────────────────┼─────────────────┤
│ Profitable │ 100% (1050/1050) │ 99.9% (958/959) │
├────────────────┼──────────────────┼─────────────────┤
│ Median return │ 1,382% (14.8x) │ 3,108% (32x) │
├────────────────┼──────────────────┼─────────────────┤
│ Average return │ 15,553% (156x) │ 18,229% (183x) │
├────────────────┼──────────────────┼─────────────────┤
│ Worst period │ +31% │ -12% │
└────────────────┴──────────────────┴─────────────────┘
The 5-year number actually has one losing period (bought Dec 2017 peak, sold Dec 2022 FTX crash bottom), but 4 years avoids that because 4 years from the 2017 peak lands you in late 2021 —
right in the bull market.
The worst 4-year return was buying in April 2021 at ~$58k and selling April 2025 at ~$76k — still a 31% gain.
So you could actually make a stronger statement: every person who has ever bought Bitcoin and held for 4 years has made money, with a median return of about 14x.
alright, good to know.
(At least the 4-year has some theoretical/ex-ante rationale, so we're not just chart hunting and cherry-picking observation points)
No. 5 years is magical term for all hodlers to become profitable. Google "hodl cave unchained capital" for example.
you are talking with an impersonator
no he's not, I'm the real adam soltys
if you are then you are not a bitcoiner. just another fiat maxi pretending to be a bitcoiner. And that is worse than an impersonator.
Ok Darth
what is this crap ?
shrug i thought it was interesting
fiat mindset is a disease
fiat nonsense crap, yes