Ethereum savings plan: twelve instalments averaged 1,981 euros, the lump sum 3,318

An Ethereum savings plan buys the same euro amount of Ether every month, whatever the price happens to be. A calculation over the past twelve months shows how much that matters: twelve instalments of 100 euros, each bought on the first of the month, worked out at an average price of 1,981 euros per Ether. Investing the same 1,200 euros in one go on the day of the first instalment would have cost 3,318 euros.

That is not a recommendation, because a single year proves nothing about the next one. What it does show is the mechanism: what a savings plan lives on, why it bites harder with Ether than with Bitcoin, and what twelve separate purchases a year mean for tax. All figures here come from daily euro prices, recalculated on October 8.

Ethereum savings plan: an average of 1,981 euros across twelve monthly instalments

A savings plan is a buying machine. You set the amount and the rhythm, the provider buys, and the price on the purchase day decides how much you get for your money. When the price falls, the same 100 euros buys more Ether; when it rises, less. The technical term is dollar-cost averaging: the average purchase price ends up below the mean of the prices, because the cheap months contribute more units than the expensive ones.

How strong that effect turns out depends entirely on how much the price swings over the savings period. For an asset that rises steadily, the savings plan loses against an early lump sum. For one that slumps and then recovers, it wins. Ether did the second of those over the past year.

The calculation in detail: 1,200 euros paid in, 0.6057 Ether in the portfolio

The basis is Ether’s daily euro prices from October 9, 2025 to October 8, 2026. The model buys on the first of each month in that window, twelve times, 100 euros each time and without fees. The result:

• Paid in: 1,200 euros across twelve instalments.
• Acquired: 0.6057 Ether.
• Average purchase price: 1,981.05 euros per Ether.
• Value of that position on October 8 at a price of around 2,300 euros: 1,393 euros.
• Result before tax and fees: plus 16.1 percent.

The average price therefore sits about 14 percent below today’s level. That gap is the whole advantage the savings plan built up in this window, and it comes purely from the path the price took.

The lump sum over the same period: a 3,318-euro entry, 30.7 percent down

The counterpart: the same 1,200 euros, invested on November 1, 2025, the day of the first instalment. The price that day was 3,318.20 euros, so the money bought 0.3616 Ether. Those Ether are worth around 832 euros today, 30.7 percent less than was paid in.

The two routes are 561 euros, or almost 47 percentage points, apart. The savings plan ended up holding 1.67 times as much Ether for exactly the same outlay. The reason lies in the path: Ether was trading near its one-year high on the starting day and fell sharply afterwards. A lump sum at the bottom would have beaten the savings plan just as clearly. Which route comes out ahead is decided by the entry point, and nobody knows that in advance. We ran the same question for Bitcoin in savings plan or lump sum.

A single year proves nothing: the limits of this calculation

Three caveats belong with it, otherwise a measurement turns into a claim. First, the window covers only twelve months, and it began near a high. A window that begins in a trough reverses the result. Second, the example ignores fees; depending on the provider, anything from a few cents to more than a euro goes per instalment, which is already noticeable on a 100-euro instalment. Third, a real savings plan rarely executes exactly on the first of the month; depending on the provider, execution falls on the next trading day or within a fixed window.

None of these caveats overturns the finding, but each shifts it. Only the direction is solid: in a year with a deep slump and a subsequent recovery, buying in instalments clearly beats an early lump sum.

Annualised volatility: 62.9 percent for Ether, 44.5 percent for Bitcoin

Because the savings plan lives on price swings, their size is worth a look. Volatility measures how widely a price scatters around its own trend; it is usually quoted as an annual figure. The same daily prices give Ether an average daily move of 3.29 percent, which annualises to 62.9 percent. For Bitcoin the figures are 2.33 percent a day and 44.5 percent a year.

The range tells the same story. Over the twelve months Ether moved between 1,361 and 3,914 euros, with the high at 2.87 times the low. Bitcoin ranged from 51,474 to 106,651 euros, or 2.07 times. Ether has been noticeably more restless over this period, which strengthens dollar-cost averaging and strains the nerves at the same time. The two go together.

Staking and a burned base fee: what sets an Ether savings plan apart from a Bitcoin one

Beyond the price moves there are two quirks that Bitcoin does not have.

The first is staking. Ether can be deposited in the network to confirm blocks, and it earns a reward for doing so. According to Ethereum’s own staking page, running your own validator takes at least 32 Ether and can hold up to 2,048 Ether; pool solutions exist for smaller amounts. Provable misbehaviour by a validator leads to slashing, in which part of the deposited Ether is destroyed. For a savings plan that means the accumulated holding can later earn something, which a Bitcoin holding does not do by itself. Which providers handle that, and on what terms, is in the comparison of staking platforms.

The second quirk concerns supply. Bitcoin has a fixed cap and an issuance schedule known in advance. On Ethereum, according to the project’s developer documentation, the base fee of every transaction is burned and thus taken out of circulation, while new Ether is issued to validators at the same time. Whether the circulating amount grows or shrinks therefore depends on network load and is not fixed in advance. For a savings plan running over several years, that is one more unknown.

Twelve instalments, twelve acquisitions: the one-year clock runs separately for each

This is where a savings plan becomes something different from a single purchase for tax purposes. In Germany, crypto assets count as other assets under section 23 of the Income Tax Act. A disposal is taxable if no more than one year lies between acquisition and sale.

What counts, then, is the acquisition, and every instalment is one of its own. The instalment from November 1, 2025 reaches its one-year mark on November 2, 2026; the instalment from October 1, 2026 not until October 2027. Selling half your holding in December 2026 therefore means facing holdings of quite different ages, instalment by instalment. Which Ether count as sold is the decisive question, and it cannot be evidenced without clean records for each instalment; for larger amounts it belongs with a tax adviser rather than in a rule of thumb.

The Federal Ministry of Finance restated the cooperation and record-keeping duties in its circular of March 6, 2025, which replaces the version of May 10, 2022. It tightened the position on foreign trading platforms: transaction statements must be retrieved and retained regularly and in full, and missing documents count against the taxpayer. For Bitcoin we broke the holding period under a savings plan down in a separate piece on the savings plan holding period.

Section 23 of the Income Tax Act: gains stay tax-free below 1,000 euros a year

The law names a threshold, and it is worded more sharply than it is usually reported. Gains from private disposals stay tax-free if the total gain achieved in the calendar year came to less than 1,000 euros. At exactly 1,000 euros the exemption no longer applies, and then the whole amount is taxable, not just the part above the threshold. An exemption threshold works differently from an allowance.

The count also runs across all private disposals in a year together, not per coin and not per venue. Selling other crypto assets within a year alongside the Ethereum savings plan puts those gains into the same pot. Keeping records as you go is therefore not paperwork but the basis of your own tax return.

Whether the one-year period survives is politically open. Abolition is under discussion; nothing has been decided so far. Until then the rule applies as it stands in the law.

ETP or real coins: what the difference means for your tax

A savings plan on Ether can be built two ways, and they are not the same for tax. Buying real coins through a trading platform falls under the section 23 framework just described. Buying an exchange-traded product on Ether, an ETP or ETN, means buying a security in a brokerage account, to which the rules for investment income apply.

The practical difference is large. With a security the broker usually withholds the tax itself, but there is no one-year period after which a gain becomes tax-free. With your own coin you handle it yourself, but can sell tax-free after a year. An ETP also carries issuer risk, because you hold a debt instrument and not a coin. Which structure suits what we took apart in certificate, ETN or coin; which brokerage accounts offer such savings plans at all is shown by the comparison of crypto brokers.

Instalment, rhythm, fees and custody: four settings where a savings plan fails

There is little to optimise about the mechanism itself, but plenty about the execution.

1. The instalment has to be sustainable. A savings plan you suspend in the next slump loses exactly the part that makes it work: the purchases at low prices. Better 25 euros that stay than 200 euros that pause in March.
2. The rhythm is secondary. Monthly, fortnightly or weekly changes little about the average price, as long as the period is long enough. More frequent buying does raise the number of fee items and the number of acquisition dates to document.
3. Fees bite in percentage terms. A flat amount per execution hits small instalments harder. At one euro per instalment, a 25-euro instalment pays four percent and a 200-euro instalment half a percent. Over twelve years the difference adds up to a size of its own.
4. Custody belongs settled before anything accumulates. A holding that grows over years eventually reaches a size at which the question of where to keep it is no longer a side issue.

Ethereum savings plan: every instalment starts its own one-year clock

The calculation above is a window, not a forecast. What remains are three points that hold regardless of the price path.

1. Set the instalment and the term before you start. The effect builds over years and across slumps, not over months. Which providers run crypto savings plans and what they charge per execution is shown by the comparison of savings plan providers.
2. Document every instalment from the first one. Date, price, amount, fee and platform, ideally automatically. Which programs pull that from the statements is in the comparison of crypto tax software.
3. Decide on custody early. If you want to hold the position yourself, set that up while the sum is small, not once it has grown large. The devices for it are in the hardware wallet comparison.

(As of October 8, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)