Weekly or monthly DCA? With a percentage fee it barely matters.

The weekly vs monthly DCA debate usually focuses on timing. KCEX's new guide argues the more useful question is which costs scale with the number of buys, and it runs that on one $5,200 yearly budget.

The image is a live screenshot of the KCEX BTC/USDT spot screen: the order book with asks and bids around 80,279 USDT and the limit buy panel, which lists fees as maker 0% and taker 0%.

One budget, four schedules

$5,200 a year can be 52 weekly buys of $100, 12 monthly buys of about $433.33, 4 quarterly buys of $1,300, or a single $5,200 buy.

Fees: percentage vs fixed

• A 0.10% fee costs $5.20 on that budget no matter how you split it
• A hypothetical $1 flat fee per buy costs $52 weekly, $12 monthly, $1 once
• Both together: $57.20, $17.20, $6.20

So frequency only gets expensive when part of the fee is fixed per order. KCEX spot is currently 0% maker and taker under a campaign with no announced end date, which takes commissions out of the comparison for now.

Zero fee doesn't mean zero cost

You still cross the spread. The guide's example: mid price $80,000, bid 79,992, ask 80,008, a $16 spread or 0.02%. Paying half of that on a market buy is about 0.01%, roughly a cent per $100 and about $0.52 across the full $5,200. Small, but it shows up in your fills, not on the fee line. If a sloppy fill costs $0.03 more than the mid on each weekly buy, that's $1.56 over a year.

Things that actually move the result

• Fixed clock times line up with everyone else's bots. The guide flags the October 27-28 FOMC meeting as the kind of window to avoid buying straight into
• Limit orders save the spread but can miss. Market orders always fill but pay it
• If you automate, check for duplicate orders on retries and partial fills
• Keep a record of each buy (date, price, amount) for tax lots and for auditing whether you actually stuck to the budget

Total cost, not just commission

The guide's formula: commissions + spread + market impact + transfer and conversion costs + any financing or custody costs. And it's clear that perps aren't a DCA tool, because funding and liquidation risk don't belong in a buy-and-hold plan.