Chainlink Investment Calculator
What would buying LINK have been worth? Pick a plan and a start date and this replays it against real daily Chainlink closes.
What LINK actually did, in the data this page replays
Measured from the 2,798 daily closes this page replays — 16 January 2019 to 13 September 2026, from Binance. Figures are bounded by that window, not by the asset’s whole life.
| History available | 7 years and 8 months (from Binance) |
|---|---|
| Bought on the first day, held to the last | 23.45× |
| Highest close in this window | $52.27 on 9 May 2021 |
| Where it sits against that high | 78% below |
| Deepest fall | −90.2%, 9 May 2021 → 19 June 2023 |
| Time to get back to that peak | still below it |
| Separate falls of 50% or more | 4 |
| Days spent more than 20% below a previous peak | 85.6% |
| Best calendar year | 2020: +520.4% |
| Worst calendar year | 2022: -73.1% |
| Annualised volatility | 107.4% |
LINK year by year
First close to last close each year. 2019 and 2026 are partial — the data starts mid-2019 and 2026 is still running.
| Year | Change | Note |
|---|---|---|
| 2019 | +261% | partial year |
| 2020 | +520.4% | best full year |
| 2021 | +64.7% | |
| 2022 | -73.1% | worst full year |
| 2023 | +165.5% | |
| 2024 | +28.7% | |
| 2025 | -43.8% | |
| 2026 | -8.9% | partial year |
The part the calculator does not show you
Held from the first day in this data to the last, LINK returned 23.45×. That headline is the easy part. The number underneath it is that the position spent 85.6% 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 LINK down 90.2%, from $52.27 on 9 May 2021 to $5.13 on 19 June 2023 — 2 years and 1 month of falling. LINK has not been back to that peak since. Anyone who bought on 9 May 2021 is still waiting, 5 years and 7 months later — which is the scenario a backtest showing a positive average return quietly averages away.
107.4% annualised volatility is ordinary for a major crypto asset and still several times a stock index. All LINK calculators →
Frequently asked questions
＋Would buying LINK on the first day of this data and holding have made money?
Yes — 23.45× from 16 January 2019 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 90.2% 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 LINK has fallen?
90.2% in this data, from 9 May 2021 down to 19 June 2023 — 2 years and 1 month of falling. It has not returned to that peak since, so anyone who bought at the top is still waiting. Bear in mind our LINK series starts in 2019; a deeper fall before that date would not appear here.
＋How often does LINK lose half its value?
4 separate falls of 50% or more appear in this data, and the position spent 85.6% of all days more than 20% below a previous peak. A drop of that size is not an exceptional event for this asset — it is a recurring feature of the record, which is the thing to size a position around.
＋What were LINK's best and worst years?
2020 was the best at +520.4%, and 2022 the worst at -73.1%. 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 7 years and 8 months of data enough to trust this backtest?
Reasonably. 7 years and 8 months spans roughly one full cycle for LINK — 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 LINK
LINK tends to move with DeFi risk appetite and has a history of long consolidation ranges punctuated by fast repricings.
LINK lives mostly on Ethereum, so on-chain moves cost Ethereum gas — use a layer-2 deployment or an exchange for small transfers.
A backtest is one path that already happened. It shows what this plan produced through the exact sequence of prices LINK went through — not what a similar plan will produce through a sequence nobody has seen yet.