[DigitalToday reporter Yoonseo Lee] In bitcoin investing, a strategy of buying in portions rather than placing a bet all at once is gaining ground. Dollar-cost averaging (DCA) is again coming into focus as an approach that long-term investors can use to pursue both stability and returns.

Cointelegraph, a blockchain media outlet, said on March 5 (local time) that DCA is a representative staged-buying strategy that invests a fixed amount regularly to reduce the risks of price volatility.

If an investor had put $250 a week into bitcoin from January 2021, they would have invested a total of $67,500 over five years and accumulated 1.65 BTC. The average purchase price at the time was $40,884. As bitcoin rose to $126,000 in October 2025, the asset value jumped to $208,023. That would amount to a profit of $76,518, or 76 percent, even based on $71,000.

By contrast, for an investor who started the same approach in 2024, the total outlay was $28,500 and they accumulated 0.3686 BTC, posting a 6 percent loss as of the end of 2025. Over the longer term, it is expected to recover, with a projected return of 46.4 percent if it breaks above $100,000.

Adam Livingston, an analyst at crypto custodian Swan Bitcoin, said a comparison of the same strategy with the stock market showed bitcoin returned 62.9 percent when investing $100 per share over five years, compared with 43.6 percent for the S&P 500. The result is presented as a case showing that a DCA strategy of buying steadily in a down market reduces volatility and maximises cumulative returns.

A future projection model, Bitcoin Well, said an analysis showed that investing $250 a week for four years from 2026 would allow an investor to accumulate about 0.30 BTC. Based on that, it projected the asset value could be $82,200 if the bitcoin price reaches $274,000 in March 2030, $129,000 if it is $430,278, and $270,000 if it rises to $900,000.

Bitcoin researcher Sminstone Vise said in a study released in November 2025 that even buying bitcoin at around $94,000 could deliver an expected return of about 300 percent by 2035.

Ultimately, the core of the DCA strategy lies in its long-term compounding effect rather than short-term profit. The approach of spreading purchase timing can lower the average purchase price, especially for a highly volatile asset like bitcoin, and could also help protect returns over the long term, fueling renewed interest in steady staged buying.

The S&P 500 has now outperformed Bitcoin by over 4x in the last 5 years. Even after 2 massive Bitcoin crashes in the last 5 years, you still would have outperformed the S&P by almost 20% by DCAing. $100 DCA: SPY: $37,470 (profit +$11,370, +43.6%) Bitcoin: $42,508 (profit… pic.twitter.com/BoBK5zRwlT