What $100 a month in BTC, ETH and a stablecoin did since July 2022
Everywhere you look, you hear about two things: DCA and the compounding effect. They're especially recommended if you're not an experienced trader.
But what do they actually do with real money, in a real market, with real crashes along the way?
Let's find out with three simple bags.
🧩 First, the two ideas in plain words
DCA (Dollar-Cost Averaging)
You buy a fixed amount on a fixed schedule, no matter the price. For example, $100 on the 1st of every month.
Price is high → your $100 buys less
Price is low → your $100 buys more
Over time, your average price smooths out
You never have to ask "is this the right moment?" again.
Compounding
Your gains start earning gains of their own. In crypto, this happens in two ways:
Through price: coins you bought years ago keep riding the long-term trend
Through yield: rewards are paid in the same coin, and then those rewards earn rewards too
🧪 The experiment
You put $100 a month into each of three bags, starting July 2022. That's 53 months, $5,300 per bag and $15,900 in total.
Why July 2022? Simply because that's when I started on Binance, so no cherry-picking. To be fair, it turned out to be close to a market bottom, which helps the results. That's exactly why the "Time" section below also shows other starting points.
Everything sits in Binance Flexible Earn, so every bag earns some yield.
🟠 Bag 1: Bitcoin, the growth engine
Invested: $5,300
Stacked: 0.1226 BTC at an average price of ~$43,300
Value today: ~$9,480 (+79%)
Bitcoin's flexible yield is tiny: 0.01%, plus a 0.25% bonus on the first 0.01 BTC. Over four years, it added only about 14,000 sats (~$11).
👉 Lesson: with BTC, price does the heavy lifting. Even when BTC dropped to ~$58K in June 2026, this bag was still about +40% in profit.
🔷 Bag 2: Ethereum, where yield made the difference
Invested: $5,300
Stacked: ~2.61 ETH at an average price of ~$2,135
Value today: ~$5,950 (+12%)
ETH had a rough ride. Without yield, you'd be up only about +7%. The ≈2% flexible yield added ≈0.12 ETH (≈$280) and almost doubled your result.
The tough part: in July 2026, this bag was about −21%. You had to keep calm and keep buying.
👉 Lesson: when price goes sideways, yield is what keeps you moving forward.
🟢 Bag 3: Stablecoin, the pure compounding machine
At 4–5% flexible yield:
After 53 months: $5,300 → ~$5,800–$5,940
Keep going 10 years: $12,000 → ~$14,780–$15,600
Keep going 20 years: $24,000 → ~$36,800–$41,300
Looks great, right? But there's a silent enemy: inflation.
💸 Your dollar loses purchasing power every year. Since July 2022, US prices have risen about 13.7%, roughly 3% a year. A dollar today buys less than a dollar did when you started.
Let's measure the bag honestly, in today's money:
To match your deposits' original buying power, you'd need ~$5,670 today
Your bag holds ~$5,800–$5,940
Real gain: only ~$140–$270
And if you had kept that cash under the mattress? It would now buy only about 93% of what it could when you saved it.
Over the long run, the gap grows (assuming ~3% inflation):
10 years: mattress cash buys ~86% of its original value, while your yield bag stays $800–$1,650 ahead of inflation
20 years: mattress cash buys ~73%, while your yield bag stays $4,100–$8,600 ahead
👉 Lesson: a 4–5% yield mostly protects your money from inflation. It doesn't make you rich. Its real job is to keep your purchasing power safe and keep your "dry powder" ready for buying big dips.
📊 All three bags together
$15,900 invested → ~$21,300 (about +34%)
🟠 BTC: big growth, big swings
🔷 ETH: weaker price, rescued by yield
🟢 Stablecoin: no drama, a shield against inflation
Three tokens and three different behaviors. One simple habit made all of them work.
🎯 "But wouldn't buying everything at once be better?"
Take the same $5,300 in BTC:
If you had bought it all in July 2022, near the bottom: ~$21,300 😎
If you had bought it all in August 2025, near the top: ~$3,500 😬
With DCA: ~$9,480 🐢
Perfect timing wins, but nobody rings a bell at the bottom. Most beginners buy when everyone is excited, near the top.
DCA won't give you the best result, but it protects you from the worst one.
⏳ Time is the secret ingredient
Same BTC plan, different starting points:
Started 4+ years ago: +79%
Started 3 years ago: +10%
Started 2 years ago: −8%
Started 1 year ago: +2%
Short periods can look flat or even negative. DCA shows its real power after a full market cycle.
🚀 What if the next bull market brings back the old highs?
Historically, every bull market has pushed Bitcoin above its previous all-time high. ETH took longer: almost 4 years to beat its 2021 record. History is not a guarantee, but here's what your bags would look like if prices simply returned to their last ATHs:
🟠 BTC back to ~$126,200 (Oct 2025 ATH, +63% from today) → your bag: ~$15,470 (+192%)
🔷 ETH back to ~$4,950 (Aug 2025 ATH, +117% from today) → your bag: ~$12,900 (+143%)
🟢 Stablecoin stays the same: ~$5,800–$5,940
📊 All three bags: $15,900 → ~$34,200 (about +115%)
Look at what happened there. The coins you bought "too early" or "at a loss" during the boring years become the ones that pay you most later. That's the reward for staying the course.
Longer data agrees. One analysis found that $100 a month in BTC since 2015 grew to about $632,000 by May 2026.
🛠️ Your simple starter plan
✅ Pick an amount you won't miss, even if prices drop 50%
✅ Pick a schedule, weekly or monthly, and automate it
✅ Think in years: at least 4
✅ Keep buying when prices drop, because that's when DCA works hardest
✅ Use yield, but understand where your coins are and the risks
❌ No leverage. Ever.
❌ Don't check prices every hour. Check your bags every few months.
Bottom line: DCA removes the guessing. Compounding rewards the waiting. Neither is exciting, and that's exactly why they work. You don't need to be a trader. You need a plan, patience and the discipline not to panic.
Which bag would you start with? 👇
⚠️ Disclaimer: I'm not an economist, financial analyst or professional journalist. I just look at charts and try to connect the dots. Nothing here is financial advice. Yield products and stablecoins carry their own risks (depegs, platform risk, rate changes). DYOR! Always DYOR, and then do more research before touching your wallet.