Investment Strategy
How people put money into crypto, examined rather than recommended: where each approach came from, what the evidence shows, what it costs and where it has failed.
Strategies, examined rather than sold.
Every exchange app now offers a way to "invest smarter": recurring buys, automatic plans, buttons that promise to take the guesswork out of timing. Behind each one sits an idea with a history, a body of research and a record of what happened when people actually used it. This section looks at all three.
We do not tell you what to buy, when, or how much. We explain how a strategy works from zero, where it came from, what studies of traditional markets found, and what our own calculations on real price data show. Then we set out what it costs, what it trades away, and where it has failed. Where the academics disagree, we give both sides at full strength and say plainly that the question is open.
Start with DCA, dollar cost averaging: buying the same amount at regular intervals, whatever the price. It is the strategy most platforms promote, and the one most often misunderstood. The article follows it from a New York Stock Exchange plan in 1954 to automated bitcoin purchases, runs eight simulations on bitcoin's own history, and shows the start dates that flatter it and the ones that do not.
Then read its mirror image, taking profits with a ladder, or "DCA out": selling in instalments instead of all at once. It starts with the founder of a London hospital, who sold his South Sea shares in 48 pieces in 1720 while Isaac Newton lost, and tests both time-based selling and price ladders on bitcoin.
Every example here describes the past, and none of it is a forecast. Nothing in this section is investment advice, and it does not take your circumstances into account. Investing in crypto can lose all the money put in.
What Taking Profits with a Ladder (DCA Out) Is and How It Works
Taking profits with a ladder (DCA out) explained from zero: how it works, Thomas Guy's staged 1720 exit, Bitcoin backtests and the risks of any exit plan.
What DCA Is and How It Works
DCA explained from zero: how it works, where it came from, what studies found, what bitcoin backtests show, what it costs and where it has failed in practice.