What if you had put $100 into crypto every month since 2022?

Anyone who had put $100 into crypto every month since 2022 would have invested a total of $5.600 per coin by August 2026. But what that amount is worth varies enormously per coin. CryptoRank compared the results of six popular coins, and the outcomes are striking.

In short:

• Tron (TRX) delivers by far the best return with +195% on a monthly investment of $100 since 2022
• Bitcoin and XRP are in positive territory; Ethereum and Cardano have actually lost value
• Regular investing offers no guarantee of profit, as the results for ADA show

Tron the big winner, Cardano at the bottom

Of the six coins examined, Tron performs best. Anyone who invested $100 per month in TRX now has a portfolio of $16.521, which equates to a return of 195%. The investment not only doubled, but almost tripled. By comparison, Bitcoin takes the total invested of $5.600 to $8.660, good for +54.6%. XRP follows closely with $8.465 and a return of +51.2%. Solana rounds off the profitable coins with a final value of $8.025 and a gain of 43.3%.

At the bottom are Ethereum and Cardano. ETH ends at $4.898, which means the investor has 12.5% less than they put in. Cardano scores worst of all: the $5.600 invested has shrunk to just $2.616, a loss of no less than 53.3%. This despite Bitcoin, Ethereum and Solana also already suffering sharp declines in 2026.

Dollar cost averaging is no guarantee of success

The strategy behind this scenario is called dollar cost averaging (DCA): you invest a fixed amount at fixed intervals, regardless of the price. The idea is that you avoid the risk of mistiming the market and get a better average entry price than if you invested everything at once. That works perfectly for coins that rise overall over the entire period, such as TRX and BTC.

But as the figures for ADA show, consistently buying more is no guarantee of profit. If a coin falls over a longer period or barely recovers, you pile loss upon loss. CryptoRank notes that Tron is clearly the winner in this scenario, but regular purchases do not automatically lead to a positive result. The choice of coin therefore remains just as important as the strategy itself. Incidentally, Tron processed 108 billion transactions in the second quarter of 2026, which illustrates the popularity of the network.