CryptoWeeklies / Glossary

What is CAGR?

CAGR is the compound annual growth rate — the single steady yearly rate that would take an investment from its starting value to its ending value over a period.

How is CAGR calculated?

If something grows from $100 to $200 over four years, its CAGR is about 18.9% a year — not 25%. Compounding means each year's growth builds on the last, so the steady-rate equivalent of a large total gain is smaller than dividing by the number of years.

CAGR deliberately smooths away the path. An asset that fell 60% and then rose 400% can have the same CAGR as one that rose steadily. It describes the endpoints, not the ride.

How do the retirement pages use CAGR?

The retirement model asks a simple question: if an asset compounds at some rate from today until a target year, how much of it would you need to hold now to reach a given value then? Each scenario sets a growth-year rate and a bear-year decline. The printed growth-year percentage is not the effective CAGR across the cycle.

The retirement illustration assumes bear years in 2026, 2030, 2034 and 2038. For three growth years followed by one decline, the cycle CAGR is ((1 + growth rate)^3 × (1 − decline rate))^(1/4) − 1. The chart now shows annualized returns from its own displayed path, including the declines. Crypto and MSTR presets differ. These dates and rates are assumptions, not predictions.

The scenarios are illustrations of arithmetic, not forecasts. Nobody knows the CAGR of any asset over the next fifteen years, and a few percentage points of difference compounds into an enormous gap by the end.

Why treat a CAGR projection as a sensitivity test?

The value of the page is in seeing how much the answer moves when the assumed rate moves — which is a lot. That sensitivity is the finding. This is not financial advice and is not a retirement plan.

For the observed Bitcoin price series, see Bitcoin CAGR over 1, 2, 4 and 10 years and by start year. These are historical returns, not model forecasts.

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• What is the altcoin season index?
• What is a composite moving-average risk score?
• What is the crypto Fear & Greed Index?
• How is a crypto risk score calculated?
• Does dollar-cost averaging actually work?
• What is a Gravity Risk score?
• What is logarithmic regression?
• What is Cycle Position?
• How do you read a price forecast?
• What is a rainbow chart?
• What does Risk Level 1 to 10 mean?
• What are valuation bands?
• What is VWAP, and how is it different from TWAP?
• What is TWAP in crypto?

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Model track records: every weekly reading the site published, beside what the price did next.

Weekly data: each week's published readings, dated and citable.