Solana Investment Calculator
What would buying SOL have been worth? Pick a plan and a start date and this replays it against real daily Solana closes.
What SOL actually did, in the data this page replays
Measured from the 2,225 daily closes this page replays — 11 August 2020 to 13 September 2026, from Binance. Figures are bounded by that window, not by the asset’s whole life.
| History available | 6 years and 1 month (from Binance) |
|---|---|
| Bought on the first day, held to the last | 30.8× |
| Highest close in this window | $261.97 on 18 January 2025 |
| Where it sits against that high | 61.2% below |
| Deepest fall | −96.3%, 6 November 2021 → 29 December 2022 |
| Time to get back to that peak | 2 years and 1 month after the low — 18 January 2025 |
| Separate falls of 50% or more | 4 |
| Days spent more than 20% below a previous peak | 86.4% |
| Best calendar year | 2021: +9,128.1% |
| Worst calendar year | 2022: -94.4% |
| Annualised volatility | 114.6% |
SOL 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 | -54.3% | partial year |
| 2021 | +9,128.1% | best full year |
| 2022 | -94.4% | worst full year |
| 2023 | +918.2% | |
| 2024 | +72.2% | |
| 2025 | -35.8% | |
| 2026 | -19.9% | partial year |
The part the calculator does not show you
Held from the first day in this data to the last, SOL returned 30.8×. That headline is the easy part. The number underneath it is that the position spent 86.4% 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 SOL down 96.3%, from $258.44 on 6 November 2021 to $9.64 on 29 December 2022 — 14 months of falling. Getting back to that peak took a further 2 years and 1 month, reached on 18 January 2025. Add those together and the round trip was 3 years and 2 months — the length of time someone who bought at the top had to hold before they were merely even again.
114.6% annualised volatility is ordinary for a major crypto asset and still several times a stock index. All SOL calculators →
Frequently asked questions
＋Would buying SOL on the first day of this data and holding have made money?
Yes — 30.8× from 11 August 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 96.3% 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 SOL has fallen?
96.3% in this data, from 6 November 2021 down to 29 December 2022 — 14 months of falling. It took a further 2 years and 1 month to get back to that peak, on 18 January 2025, so the full round trip was 3 years and 2 months. Bear in mind our SOL series starts in 2020; a deeper fall before that date would not appear here.
＋How often does SOL lose half its value?
4 separate falls of 50% or more appear in this data, and the position spent 86.4% 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 SOL's best and worst years?
2021 was the best at +9,128.1%, and 2022 the worst at -94.4%. 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 6 years and 1 month of data enough to trust this backtest?
Reasonably. 6 years and 1 month spans roughly one full cycle for SOL — 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 SOL
SOL is a high-beta major: it has repeatedly outperformed and underperformed BTC by wide margins inside the same cycle.
Base Solana fees are a fraction of a cent, but during congestion you pay priority fees to get included — budget for them when timing matters.
A backtest is one path that already happened. It shows what this plan produced through the exact sequence of prices SOL went through — not what a similar plan will produce through a sequence nobody has seen yet.