Bitcoin stands at $ 55,000 today, as of this writing. This means it’s about 90% up since the beginning of 2021.
While this is impressive in itself, what is even more remarkable is the performance of BTC against other well-known investment tools such as some of the most popular stock indexes, the largest companies in the world. and precious metals like gold and silver.
S&P500 and Nasdaq Left Behind
The primary cryptocurrency entered 2021 at roughly $28.9k before it shot up to unseen heights in April at $65,000, which became the current all-time high. What followed were a few hectic months instigated by FUD, first from Elon Musk and later from China.
After it bottomed below $30,000 in July, BTC resumed its bullish run and has nearly doubled its value to $55,000 as of writing these lines. Specifically, that means it’s almost 90% year-to-date.
While speculations run wild where it can end the year, with $100,000 being the prevalent opinion, it’s worth exploring how bitcoin compares to other assets from the more traditional financial spheres.
Let’s start with arguably the most popular stock index – the S&P 500, which tracks the performance of the 500 largest companies listed on the US stock exchanges. It has actually performed well this year – entered at 3,700, charted a new ATH in early September at 4,520, but has retraced slightly to 4,391 as of Friday’s closing. Meaning, it’s up by roughly 18% in ten months.
At the same time, the Nasdaq Composite Index has registered somewhat more modest gains since the start of the year – just under 15%. Interestingly, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has increased by a very similar percentage in the same time frame.
Let’s look at the individual stocks of the world’s most important companies. Apple’s shares are up by 10% YTD, Microsoft’s YTD ROI is 35%, Amazon’s by just 3%, Facebook’s (23%), and Tesla’s by 7.5%.
Google (Alphabet, symbol GOOG) has been among the top performers, with a notable increase of 61% since the start of the year. Yet, none of them is anywhere close to bitcoin in terms of yearly gains.
Bitcoin versus. Or against. Money
Being considered by many to be digital gold, it is also worth comparing cryptocurrency with yellow metal and maybe silver as well. After all, silver’s market capitalization is still larger than bitcoin’s, at least according to 8marketcap.com.
Both metals are expected to be particularly popular these days, given global economic uncertainty and rising inflation. Yet, gold – arguably the most utilized store of value instrument historically – is down since the start of the year. It fell by more than 7%, despite a slight drop in October.
Silver’s situation is even worse as it has dropped by 17% against the dollar year-to-date.
Therefore, neither of the two most popular precious metals can even come close to bitcoin in terms of annual earnings, at least in October. As such, it’s not that big of a surprise that many prominent names, such as Anthony Scaramucci, Steve Wozniak, and Michael Saylor, have described bitcoin as the better option than gold.
It should also be noted that cryptocurrency has become the top performing asset of the last century with an 8,900,000% return on investment.
