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)
I'm sorry, you said something right?
https://x.com/Birdyword/status/2019539083731824996
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
what is this crap ?
shrug i thought it was interesting
fiat mindset is a disease
fiat nonsense crap, yes