Aave Investment Calculator
What would buying AAVE have been worth? Pick a plan and a start date and this replays it against real daily Aave closes.
What AAVE actually did, in the data this page replays
Measured from the 2,160 daily closes this page replays — 15 October 2020 to 13 September 2026, from Binance. Figures are bounded by that window, not by the asset’s whole life.
| History available | 5 years and 11 months (from Binance) |
|---|---|
| Bought on the first day, held to the last | 2.96× |
| Highest close in this window | $628.75 on 18 May 2021 |
| Where it sits against that high | 79.8% below |
| Deepest fall | −92.1%, 18 May 2021 → 18 June 2022 |
| Time to get back to that peak | still below it |
| Separate falls of 50% or more | 1 |
| Days spent more than 20% below a previous peak | 93.3% |
| Best calendar year | 2021: +179.9% |
| Worst calendar year | 2022: -80.5% |
| Annualised volatility | 109.4% |
AAVE year by year
First close to last close each year. 2020 and 2026 are partial — the data starts mid-2020 and 2026 is still running.
| Year | Change | Note |
|---|---|---|
| 2020 | +105.8% | partial year |
| 2021 | +179.9% | best full year |
| 2022 | -80.5% | worst full year |
| 2023 | +108.2% | |
| 2024 | +165.8% | |
| 2025 | -54.3% | |
| 2026 | -14.7% | partial year |
The part the calculator does not show you
Held from the first day in this data to the last, AAVE returned 2.96×. That headline is the easy part. The number underneath it is that the position spent 93.3% of all days more than 20% below a previous peak — so for most of the time you owned it, you were looking at a figure lower than one you had already seen.
The deepest fall took AAVE down 92.1%, from $628.75 on 18 May 2021 to $49.6 on 18 June 2022 — 13 months of falling. AAVE has not been back to that peak since. Anyone who bought on 18 May 2021 is still waiting, 4 years and 10 months later — which is the scenario a backtest showing a positive average return quietly averages away.
109.4% annualised volatility is ordinary for a major crypto asset and still several times a stock index. All AAVE calculators →
Frequently asked questions
＋Would buying AAVE on the first day of this data and holding have made money?
Yes — 2.96× from 15 October 2020 to 13 September 2026. The figure is real but it is also the single luckiest entry available in this window, and it required holding through a fall of 92.1% on the way. Set the calculator to a date you might plausibly have chosen instead and the answer usually changes a great deal.
＋What is the worst AAVE has fallen?
92.1% in this data, from 18 May 2021 down to 18 June 2022 — 13 months of falling. It has not returned to that peak since, so anyone who bought at the top is still waiting. Bear in mind our AAVE series starts in 2020; a deeper fall before that date would not appear here.
＋How much time does AAVE spend below its previous high?
93.3% of all days in this window sat more than 20% below a previous peak. Put another way, for most of the time you would have owned it, the screen showed a number lower than one you had already seen — which is the part of a backtest's headline return that the headline never conveys.
＋What were AAVE's best and worst years?
2021 was the best at +179.9%, and 2022 the worst at -80.5%. The gap between those two is the reason a single average annual return is a poor description of this asset: almost nobody experiences the average, they experience one of the two extremes depending on when they bought.
＋Is 5 years and 11 months of data enough to trust this backtest?
Reasonably. 5 years and 11 months spans roughly one full cycle for AAVE — enough for the drawdown figure to mean something, not enough to call it a pattern. The assets here with a decade or more behind them support firmer conclusions.
What to keep in mind for AAVE
AAVE tracks DeFi risk appetite and total value locked, and reacts to any headline about bad debt in lending markets — including other protocols'.
AAVE is an Ethereum token, so transfers cost Ethereum gas; the protocol runs on cheaper layer 2s where borrowing costs far less to manage.
A backtest is one path that already happened. It shows what this plan produced through the exact sequence of prices AAVE went through — not what a similar plan will produce through a sequence nobody has seen yet.