Bitcoin is far superior to gold and silver in terms of investment returns, having delivered much stronger gains than traditional precious metals over the past decade, according to analyst Adam Livingston.
In a post on social platform X, the author and market analyst said bitcoin has surged about 27,701% since the beginning of 2015, compared with a roughly 405% rise for silver and about 283% for gold over the same period. At a recent price near $90,082, Livingston argued, the performance gap shows how the cryptocurrency has vastly outpaced the two metals that are often seen as classic stores of value.
Livingston said the chart illustrates that, even if bitcoin’s earliest trading years are overlooked to answer critics of the time frame, gold and silver still “dramatically underperform” what he called the “apex asset,” adding that in his view “bitcoin is inevitable.”
Protection, Scarcity and Inflation Resistance Win
Livingston has always been an advocate of Bitcoin, saying it offers a number of advantages over both government currencies and traditional safe haven assets such as gold.
In one post, he said bitcoin provides protection against inflation, arguing that the United States median home price from 2015 to 2025 looks very different depending on the unit of account. By his figures, the median home price rose about 36.1% in dollar terms over that period, fell roughly 29.1% when priced in gold and dropped around 99.54% when measured in Bitcoin.
He also believes that Bitcoin’s limited supply is one of its main strengths. In another post he said gold output can be expanded with new technology, while the number of Bitcoins that can ever exist is capped at 21 million coins, adding that scarcity ultimately “wins.”
In a separate post, Livingston shared a comparison table that set Bitcoin against gold on many features, such as portability, divisibility, settlement speed and storage costs, arguing that Bitcoin is “a better asset than gold on almost every front,” and that some gold supporters are “refusing to accept the data.”
Bitcoin is Almost There, But Still Has to Mature
Bitcoin does appear to offer many of the features its supporters point to, from strict scarcity to easy portability across borders.
Yet, for now, its price is still almost always quoted in dollars, euros or even ounces of gold, and its success or failure is judged by how it moves against those benchmarks, which means it remains tied to the existing monetary system.
Gold, by contrast, has served as the foundation of past monetary systems, is still held by central banks as part of their reserves and is globally recognized by weight and purity, which gives it a type of value that stands apart from the daily tick of market prices.
To sum up, it is reasonable to say Bitcoin looks superior to gold in terms of past returns and some monetary characteristics, but unless it evolves into a unit of account in its own right and is used to price goods, services and wages directly, it will continue to function as a dependent asset that is ultimately measured through the system it attempts to replace.
Read More: Dan Tapiero Says Bitcoin Bull Run is Mid-Cycle. Do The Numbers Add Up?
