Growth Rate: Bitcoin vs. S&P 500 and Gold

[Ambatman]

I believe you didn't consider different era, Inflation and the amount of money in supply in recent years
And not to mention accessibility it had.
I'm not trying to say Bitcoin hasn't been impressive but they standing that long is a testament of their growth.
I understand the comparison with Gold but S&P is quite different
It's like comparing NVIDIA growth since 2022 with that of Bitcoin.



There are coins that almost did similar if not close to that in recent years but the difference is Bitcoin still standing
And emulating what giants like Gold did.

[#CapsLOck]

A point to keep in mind is that percentage returns may be misleading if the initial market value is very low. Bitcoin's early expansion took place at a time when it was still not well known and embraced. It would take a lot more new capital to get the same multiple today. The issue is how much more demand is there going to be to sustain such scale. But it's not just the supply that matters. There's demand and investor confidence as well.

[Dr.Bitcoin_Strange]

In my opinion, these assets are not in the same category and so you should not expect that they were going to have the same result being that one is older and one is the youngest, gold has been used for different purpose that Bitcoin and S&P5 can not be used for, same as Bitcoin has been used to move huge amount of money from one place to another without any third party involved. So, they all have their unique features and should not be compared or expected to have the same result or show same strength, Bitcoin is decentralized and flexible to carry about, while gold is not.

[Jubilee58]

This is exactly a clear evidence to show that Bitcoin has more millionaire making potential than investing in Gold, and S&P 500. Before now there has been debate why it is more profitable to invest in Bitcoin than any other digital investment, and I believe everyone is well convinced with this comparison. The only thing is that diversification in any investment cannot be ruled out otherwise one can only choose investing in Bitcoin alone because of the long term track record of making huge profits. Stock has existed even for more than than a century, and Gold investment has also been their for some decades but Bitcoin is still less than two decades in the digital market, but has produced outstanding profit in the digital market. Bitcoin is unarguably the best digital asset to invest in , and this is the more reason why it is attracting so much attention, and investors round the world.
Many people are still afraid of Bitcoin investing today, but I think such people have not fully researched, and understand how Bitcoin investing work. They say Bitcoin is too volatile, and Bitcoin have no governmental backing. However Bitcoin is still existing, and even doing better than the government backed asset. However, we can see the increasing interest from both individuals, and government showing that government is gradually embracing Bitcoin , and also investing in Bitcoin as an asset against inflation.

[free-bit.co.in]

Bitcoin's limited supply and the speed of its adoption do their job.

This is the good feature of Bitcoin. Being scarce makes it very valuable and with the cause of halving which makes the mining difficulty more difficult. When it happens, that makes the price more expensive.

That alone is not enough tbh. What I mean is, scarcity or a tightening circulating supply will not mean much if demand isn't growing along with it.

To properly value or estimate a asset's price, you gotta weigh both supply and demand and adoption rate and real market demand.

Everyone keep saying bitcoin will flip gold someday. But that's only gonna happen if demand shootsup and become many time bigger than available supply. If demand stalls or just stop growing, bitcoin will still struggle to flip gold, even if supply keeps getting squeezed.

[tbct_mt2]

That alone is not enough tbh. What I mean is, scarcity or a tightening circulating supply will not mean much if demand isn't growing along with it.

To properly value or estimate a asset's price, you gotta weigh both supply and demand and adoption rate and real market demand.

It explains why Bitcoin succeeds while most altcoins failed even they tried to shill their projects as game changers, Bitcoin killers. Bitcoin has a good deflationary supply but it has many other things which make its very high value and its value has increased very well with time too.

Only a cap for total supply and deflation with time and market cycles won't be enough to create value of a cryptocurrency. How many cryptocurrency projects are decentralized in developments. How many blockchains are decentralized in hashrates if they are PoW?

Among many blockchains, Bitcoin is the most decentralized, strongest and most secure while in developments, it has best developers in blockchain industry too.

Everyone keep saying bitcoin will flip gold someday. But that's only gonna happen if demand shootsup and become many time bigger than available supply. If demand stalls or just stop growing, bitcoin will still struggle to flip gold, even if supply keeps getting squeezed.

[Hamza2424]

This is the good feature of Bitcoin. Being scarce makes it very valuable and with the cause of halving which makes the mining difficulty more difficult. When it happens, that makes the price more expensive.

Are you really implying halving is equal to more mining difficulty?

Bro, halving does not make mining more difficult haha. I am sure I don't have to tell you what halving does, but difficulty is something that adjusts separately based on the network hash rate to keep the blocks around 10 mins, so these two are two different things, unless you were talking about something else? But you know that despite the fact of difficulty increment or decrement, the halving occurs anyway.

[Wind_FURY]

What you will notice about the three is that they are all store of value. Bitcoin grew faster, but it is a new asset which makes it normal. That does not mean bitcoin will grow as it was in the past because its marketcap has significantly increased. Bitcoin is now in their category. It may not grow more than 50x in the next 50 years, and that is if it grows up to 50x.

Although, how would we, OR ANYONE, would actually know?

  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[wapwapwendy]

It took Bitcoin 14.3 years to grow 15,400x. By comparison, it took the S&P 500 98.7 years to achieve the same growth.

And it took Bitcoin 9.7 years to grow 100x. It took gold 55 years to achieve the same growth.

Bitcoin's limited supply and the speed of its adoption do their job.

https://talkimg.com/images/2026/10/01/U0qgQa.jpg
Source

The growth has been impressive, but I think the bigger point is how quickly Bitcoin gained adoption compared to traditional assets. If adoption keeps growing, the long-term numbers could look very different again.

[bitcoin-shark]

Bitcoin is obviously the fastest-growing asset, but it also carries the very real possibility of rapid declines; for a long-term investment, it is still best to diversify—I would go with 40% BTC, 30% gold, and 30% ETFs.

[legiteum]

If you cherry-pick your start and end dates you can make any investment look like the best in the world.

If you bought NVDA in 2019 you'd have a 1000x return. Bitcoin went down in the same period if you pick the exact right dates.

What matters to any investor is not the past, but the future. Bitcoin's previous rise has absolutely nothing to do with where it will go in the future, and there's no way to know since Bitcoin has no fundamentals besides the random consumer demand of the meme.

And could people please stop talking about the 21M coin limit as if it's some kind of marvel? You sound like indigenous tribe member from an Amazon jungle being amazed by the box in the kitchen that keeps things cold--like you've never seen this before in your life and you are amazed by it. To any serious investor, you sound like a rube .

Every single investment you buy has a limited supply. A company can (if they give their stockholders sufficient notice) increase their stock supply, and Bitcoin could be changed with one line of code and no notice legally required. (Nether of these factors are realistically going to worry investors). Land cannot be increased. Gold increases very slowly and very predictably. (Also, if you want to sound like an even bigger rube, compare your investment in BTC to the USD--only poor people "invest" in currency  ).

[pooya87]

It is a cool comparison but it needs a little bit of context.

For example in case of gold, most of the rise specially in recent years is because of its mass buying by the governments and their central banks. No such adoption exists for bitcoin, all the rise is because regular people with small investments bought it up. If bitcoin were to be adopted as reserve currency/asset by governments its rise would be so much higher than it has been so far.

Similarly with S&P 500, its rise was not the healthiest either. It is like the dollar and the US economy as a whole. It is a lot of fakery and debt pile up that has been pumping it up with most of it not being natural "growth" that comes from economy actually growing.

[LuckyCrypto777]

It is a cool comparison but it needs a little bit of context.
For example in case of gold, most of the rise specially in recent years is because of its mass buying by the governments and their central banks. No such adoption exists for bitcoin, all the rise is because regular people with small investments bought it up. If bitcoin were to be adopted as reserve currency/asset by governments its rise would be so much higher than it has been so far.

Yes, even those who aren't interested have heard about how actively China is buying gold. There are also reports of unofficial gold purchases by they.
+ China and Japan are reducing their purchases of US government bonds.
This could lead to a debt crisis for the US.

Btw:
Since the US-Iran war started:

GOLD: -19%
SILVER: -34%

BITCOIN: +27%

[AmaGold70]

Bitcoin has grown so much in price within a very short period of time compared to gold , and stock. And neither gold nor S&P 500 grew up to Bitcoin within the period of 14 years, and this is a sign that Bitcoin still have massive growth, and based on this reason I still believe that Bitcoin is more preferable when it comes to profit making on the long run. These assets are all hedge against inflation as they increases in value over time. However, every investor should know their level of risk, and only invest in asset that is compatible with them. People who have high risk tolerance can endure the volatility of Bitcoin, while people with less risk tolerance invest in assets like stock, and gold.

[Wind_FURY]

Bitcoin is obviously the fastest-growing asset, but it also carries the very real possibility of rapid declines; for a long-term investment, it is still best to diversify—I would go with 40% BTC, 30% gold, and 30% ETFs.

"Rapid declines" are simply Golden Opportunities disguised as something "Bearish".

If a person truly understood the basics of Bitcoin, how it works, what makes the network stick together, and also understood that the legacy financial system will always print more money to sustain itself, then those "rapid declines" will be something more Bullish.

[tbct_mt2]

"Rapid declines" are simply Golden Opportunities disguised as something "Bearish".

If a person truly understood the basics of Bitcoin, how it works, what makes the network stick together, and also understood that the legacy financial system will always print more money to sustain itself, then those "rapid declines" will be something more Bullish.

With Bitcoin, there is no death spiral like Terra tokens (LUNA and UST), FTX exchange's token FTT, and other shitcoins, meme tokens. With Bitcoin, there are things like bear markets, bull run drawdowns, bull run corrections, bear market dips, crashes but eventually bear markets end and new market cycles and bull market comes to make new all time highs for Bitcoin.

With Bitcoin, "rapid declines" are great opportunities for buying cheaper bitcoin that did not exist in bull markets. Intelligent and experienced investors are not fearful with "rapid declines" but are super excited with such and they even are well prepared for buying dips.

[terrific]

But it's not just the supply that matters. There's demand and investor confidence as well.

They're actually always together.
The supply and demand can't be tied away as a factor of growth for Bitcoin, it's always been there.
And the confidence that we all have is due to its feat aside from the supply and demand.
Network security that hasn't been broken for a long time is what makes us confident in it.
With its community as well, it keeps on growing from time to time and massive adoption is happening through the big financial institutions too.

[qurbanshah02]

Among these three assets, one is an asset that is many years old and its price was very high since then and even today it affects many people and its impact on the world is quite high. The second asset is one that has been created for 17 years and has affected a lot in such a long time and has also increased its price a lot and it is not under anyone's control and its strength will increase even more in the coming times. In addition to this, the third asset S&P 500 also has a very good marketing which has supplied 500 million so far. All three of these have their own strong growth and no one is dominant, so gold has been ruling since the beginning and Bitcoin has made people crazy for 17 years and many people have also paid attention to S&P 500 and made profits. Therefore, it is difficult to compare these three with each other, everyone is growing with their own profits.

[greysonz]

It is a cool comparison but it needs a little bit of context.
For example in case of gold, most of the rise specially in recent years is because of its mass buying by the governments and their central banks. No such adoption exists for bitcoin, all the rise is because regular people with small investments bought it up. If bitcoin were to be adopted as reserve currency/asset by governments its rise would be so much higher than it has been so far.

Yes, even those who aren't interested have heard about how actively China is buying gold. There are also reports of unofficial gold purchases by they.
+ China and Japan are reducing their purchases of US government bonds.
This could lead to a debt crisis for the US.

Btw:
Since the US-Iran war started:

GOLD: -19%
SILVER: -34%

BITCOIN: +27%

Yeah, and they don't slow down


https://x.com/WatcherGuru/status/2107875840105017831

[snowpega]

Yeah, there is no doubt that Bitcoin's limited supply and adoption bring it to that level. But you should also think about what the main reason is that makes wise people trust and adopt it. The main reason is its decentralization which means you have the power of money in your hands. And those who really understand how the traditional money system and Bitcoin as a digital asset work will never trust holding fiat for a long time. Such kind of people always try their best to hold their money in either Bitcoin or any other asset that has the best ability to return the best ROI(return on investment).

And in the case of Gold, the S&P and Bitcoin, the results we have seen are in the OP shared image.
So, this historical data shows that while other assets take decades, Bitcoin took only a decade to achieve a higher level of growth, right? I have never seen this level of ROI on any other asset. Have you guys noticed any other safe asset that is returning such a level of profit?