Ethereum Investment Calculator
What would buying ETH have been worth? Pick a plan and a start date and this replays it against real daily Ethereum closes.
What ETH actually did, in the data this page replays
Measured from the 3,315 daily closes this page replays — 17 August 2017 to 13 September 2026, from Binance. Figures are bounded by that window, not by the asset’s whole life.
| History available | 9 years and 1 month (from Binance) |
|---|---|
| Bought on the first day, held to the last | 8.35× |
| Highest close in this window | $4,832.07 on 22 August 2025 |
| Where it sits against that high | 47.8% below |
| Deepest fall | −94%, 13 January 2018 → 15 December 2018 |
| Time to get back to that peak | 2 years and 1 month after the low — 24 January 2021 |
| Separate falls of 50% or more | 4 |
| Days spent more than 20% below a previous peak | 87.2% |
| Best calendar year | 2020: +463.1% |
| Worst calendar year | 2018: -82.6% |
| Annualised volatility | 86.4% |
ETH year by year
First close to last close each year. 2017 and 2026 are partial — the data starts mid-2017 and 2026 is still running.
| Year | Change | Note |
|---|---|---|
| 2017 | +143% | partial year |
| 2018 | -82.6% | worst full year |
| 2019 | -7.1% | |
| 2020 | +463.1% | best full year |
| 2021 | +404.3% | |
| 2022 | -68.2% | |
| 2023 | +90.1% | |
| 2024 | +41.9% | |
| 2025 | -11.6% | |
| 2026 | -16.1% | partial year |
The part the calculator does not show you
Held from the first day in this data to the last, ETH returned 8.35×. That headline is the easy part. The number underneath it is that the position spent 87.2% 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 ETH down 94%, from $1,388.02 on 13 January 2018 to $83.76 on 15 December 2018 — 11 months of falling. Getting back to that peak took a further 2 years and 1 month, reached on 24 January 2021. Add those together and the round trip was 3 years — the length of time someone who bought at the top had to hold before they were merely even again.
86.4% annualised volatility is ordinary for a major crypto asset and still several times a stock index. All ETH calculators →
Frequently asked questions
＋Would buying ETH on the first day of this data and holding have made money?
Yes — 8.35× from 17 August 2017 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 94% 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 ETH has fallen?
94% in this data, from 13 January 2018 down to 15 December 2018 — 11 months of falling. It took a further 2 years and 1 month to get back to that peak, on 24 January 2021, so the full round trip was 3 years. Bear in mind our ETH series starts in 2017; a deeper fall before that date would not appear here.
＋How often does ETH lose half its value?
4 separate falls of 50% or more appear in this data, and the position spent 87.2% 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 ETH's best and worst years?
2020 was the best at +463.1%, and 2018 the worst at -82.6%. 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 9 years and 1 month of data enough to trust this backtest?
It is among the longer records available here — 9 years and 1 month covering several complete cycles, which is enough for the drawdown and recovery figures to carry real weight. It is still one path that already happened, and the next sequence of prices has no obligation to resemble it.
What to keep in mind for ETH
ETH usually tracks BTC with a higher beta — bigger moves in both directions, especially around network upgrades.
Ethereum mainnet gas is priced in gwei and rises with demand; layer-2 rollups settle to Ethereum for a fraction of the cost, so compare the two before moving small amounts.
A backtest is one path that already happened. It shows what this plan produced through the exact sequence of prices ETH went through — not what a similar plan will produce through a sequence nobody has seen yet.