
Buy a fixed amount on a fixed schedule — week after week, regardless of price. Smooths volatility, removes timing decisions.
Default parameters · BTCUSDT · 1d · 4 years · B&H +26.9%
DCA (Dollar-Cost Averaging) is the most popular passive strategy outside Buy & Hold. Instead of investing your entire capital on day one (which exposes you to the timing of that single day), you split it into many smaller, equal-sized purchases on a fixed schedule — typically weekly or monthly.
Example: $10,000 to invest, weekly DCA over 1 year = $192 spent every Monday for 52 weeks. The average price you end up paying is the time-weighted average of those weekly buys.
Why it works:
On the platform: the DCA strategy is implemented as a reference for comparing against active strategies (analogous to Buy & Hold). It uses weekly purchases with the total capital divided equally across the entire trading window. The CAGR is computed from the final portfolio value vs. total invested capital — directly comparable to other strategies' CAGRs.
DCA is most powerful when combined with a long time horizon. Over multi-year windows, the timing of the start date matters far less than with Buy & Hold.
BTCUSDT · 1d · 4 years · default parameters · refreshed daily
Run with my own parameters →// Setup
total_weeks = (end_date - start_date) / 7
weekly_amount = total_capital / total_weeks
// Each week
for week in range(total_weeks):
buy weekly_amount worth of asset
// At end
SELL all at closeDepends on the time period. In Bitcoin's strong uptrends (e.g. 2017, 2020–2021), Buy & Hold wins because DCA leaves capital uninvested. In sideways or bear phases (e.g. 2018, 2022), DCA wins because lower-priced buys reduce average cost. Over long-enough windows (5+ years), they tend to converge — both significantly outperform most active strategies on BTC.
Higher frequency = smoother averaging but more transaction costs. Weekly is a good middle ground for most retail traders — frequent enough to capture volatility, low enough to keep fees manageable. Monthly works fine too if your exchange charges per-trade fees. The key is *consistency*, not frequency — pick a schedule and stick to it.
Yes, and many serious crypto holders do exactly this. Common pattern: split your capital — say 70 % goes into DCA (the "core"), 30 % is reserved for an active strategy (the "satellite") that exits during high-risk regimes. The active part absorbs drawdowns; the DCA part captures the long-term trend. Backtest the satellite portion separately on the platform.
The benchmark for everything else — buy on day one, hold forever. The reference every strategy is measured against.
The classic trend-following signal — when the 50-day SMA crosses above the 200-day SMA, the trend has flipped bullish.
A momentum signal that triggers when the RSI crosses its own moving average — combining oversold detection with trend confirmation.
Check out our Strategy Insights Reports — pre-baked deep-dives with historical results, comparisons, and market context.