A 4.5-year study of three crypto assets, two strategies, and the one thing they don't share: how capital behaves between the peaks.
This is not a pitch. It is a backtest.
Between January 2022 and July 2026, we ran the Perpeto system on historical data for BTC/USDT, ETH/USDT and SOL/USDT, and compared it to a simple buy-and-hold investor. Same start date, same exchange data. One assumption: the investor had $2,000 to deploy on each asset on January 1, 2022. Everything else is what the market and the rules produced.
What follows is the full record — including where Hold wins.
Before the numbers, the rules that produced them.
The backtest runs on 1-second tick data from the Binance spot market for BTC/USDT, ETH/USDT and SOL/USDT — approximately 130+ million rows per asset, per year. We do not aggregate to daily candles for the simulation itself; the system sees price exactly as it would in production. Daily numbers in the charts below are roll-ups of that second-by-second engine, not its input.
The strategy ran with the identical rules that operate in production — no leverage, no margin, spot only, long only, progressive entries on drops, positions closed only in profit after a price reversal (callback). BTC and ETH used the Dynamic profile; SOL used the Standard profile — a less aggressive variant chosen for SOL's higher volatility.
Every position is the same size within each asset. This is not a martingale. There is no doubling, no revenge sizing, no discretionary override.
The benchmark is a passive buy-and-hold investor who deployed the same $2,000 on day one and did nothing else for 4.5 years. Same starting capital across all three assets for direct comparison.
The system did not change. The markets did.
Standard view is the primary study: realised profit is withdrawn as earned and position size stays fixed. Switch to Reinvested to see how the same $2,000 — with earned profit compounded back into larger positions, no new client capital — would have performed. The tables below and the charts in §03 update; the surrounding commentary describes the standard scenario.
Between Jan 2022 and Jul 2026, Bitcoin moved from $47,723 to $64,042 — a 34.2% net gain with a 66% interim drawdown and a $124k peak in October 2025. This is the environment where Hold plays its home game.
Over the full period, Perpeto delivered a higher total return with less than half the drawdown. But at BTC's October 2025 peak, Hold was ahead — briefly worth $5,224 (+161%), while Perpeto was well behind at that same moment. Selling at that peak was not possible in practice; by July 2026, Hold had given back nearly half. Perpeto had not tried to catch the top, so it had less to give back.
Between Jan 2022 and Jul 2026, Ethereum fell from $3,766 to $1,800 — losing 52% of its price. This is the environment where Hold has nothing to capture.
ETH was a declining market throughout most of the period. A Hold investor ended with 48% of their capital. Perpeto ended well above its starting capital. The difference is not timing luck — it is what the system did between the peaks: 4,077 closed positions, each in profit, funded by the same volatility that punished Hold.
Solana lost 95% of its value at the deepest point of the 2022 crash — falling from $179 to $8 before recovering. By July 2026 it closed at $82, still 54% below its starting price. The deepest stress test of the three assets.
SOL was the deepest test. Hold lost 95% of its capital at the worst point and recovered to just 46% by the end. Perpeto finished well above its starting capital, with a far shallower drawdown than Hold. The 6,175 closed positions during the crash and the subsequent volatility did what Hold could not — turn a falling chart into accumulated cash.
The system does not predict market tops — it just refuses to give them back. Peak equity for each strategy vs. final equity on 06.07.2026, on the same data, same exchange.
In this backtest, when the market retraced, Hold gave back 49 to 69 percent of its peak profits. Perpeto gave back only a small fraction of its own. Same market, same time — different mechanism.
The outputs above are consequences. These are the mechanics that produced them.
Both strategies start at $2,000 on Jan 1, 2022. Hold's line is a 1:1 replica of the underlying price movement — the same shape scaled to the account's USD value. The gap between Hold and Perpeto is what the system does between the peaks.
All three assets start from the same $2,000 client capital ceiling. Position size scales to the ladder depth — $25 on BTC (80 max), $20 on ETH (100 max), $14 on SOL (143 max). The system expands into drawdowns and contracts on recoveries, holding a fraction of the ceiling in open positions on average and keeping the rest as exchange cash, available at any time. (Toggle Reinvested above to see how deployed capital grows when realised profit is compounded.)
Every dollar of the user's account, visualised as two layers — both held on the user's own exchange. The upper area is total account equity, which moves with the price of the underlying asset. The lower area is realised profit accumulated, which only grows. Notice how realised profit climbs day after day regardless of whether the price is rising or falling — that floor cannot be undone by the next drawdown.
Closed, realised USD profit per month, net of Binance fees. Profit stays on the user's own exchange account — they can withdraw it at any time or leave it to compound through redeployment.
of days closed at least one position. Every closed position was in profit. No stops, no overrides.
maximum open positions during the deepest drawdown. System sized itself to the market.
total closed positions on BTC. Each one closed in profit.
average active capital on BTC over 4.5 years; peak $2,000. The rest sat as available exchange cash.
A backtest is worth the caveats it publishes alongside it.
At Bitcoin's all-time high on 6 October 2025, a Hold investor was momentarily sitting on +161% ($5,224 from $2,000). Perpeto was near +43% at the same moment. If you could have sold at that exact top — which no one does in practice — Hold would have delivered nearly 4× the Perpeto return in that instant. By 6 July 2026, however, Hold had given back nearly half of that peak. Perpeto had not tried to catch the top, so it had less to give back.
Every open position waits for price to recover above entry. In a sustained, multi-year decline without interim bounces, capital stays allocated. The system does not time bottoms — it waits for them. This works because crypto markets oscillate; it does not work if an asset only goes down.
Perpeto assumes the user keeps enough reserve on the exchange to fund positions during drawdowns. The backtest ran with disciplined capital management; a real user who under-funds the strategy will see different results. This is not a "set and forget" product for undersized accounts.
Binance spot trading fees are already deducted from every closed position. The Perpeto performance fee is not included. The Perpeto fee is tiered from 5% to 25% depending on your lifetime cumulative realised profit — the more you earn, the less you pay. See perpeto.com/#pricing for the full breakdown.
If after reading this section the system still makes sense to you, it probably does.
Hold
A position on time. It assumes the asset will be worth more in the future than it is today, and it trades patience for return. It is a good tool when trends are real and long.
Perpeto
A position on volatility. It assumes the asset will move up and down between now and the future — and it converts each oscillation into a closed, realised trade. It is a good tool when markets chop, drift, or decline without direction.
Between Jan 2022 and Jul 2026, Perpeto beat Hold on all three assets — BTC (+34.2% vs +40.4%), ETH (−52.2% vs +43.4%), SOL (−54.2% vs +54.1%). Three very different markets, one system, same shape of result. The profit Hold showed at its peak existed only on paper — and by the end of the period, most of it was gone. Perpeto retained 90 to 96 percent of its own peak.
Your funds stay on your exchange. Read + Trade API only. No withdrawal access.Without reinvestment, realised profit can be withdrawn at any time and each position stays the same size. With reinvestment, earned profit stays in and progressively enlarges each new position — the client never adds new capital. Same $2,000 start, same trades, same exchange data. Only the profit already produced is put back to work. The reinvesting version is available via the Standard / Reinvested switch in §02 — its effect on realised profit over 4.5 years:
Reinvestment raises deployed capital above $2,000 only by putting already-earned profit back to work — never new client money. It also carries slightly more open profit into a retrace, so peak-to-final give-back is a little larger. Both trade-offs are visible in the toggled tables and charts above.