Investment pundit Willy Woo has come up with a very direct visual contrast of what happens when you put your money in either gold or Bitcoin.
Analyzing increases over the last 10 years, Woo found that Bitcoin investors who implement tenure profit-taking after chipping in a single dollar could now buy a luxury yacht, where the same investor who put a dollar into gold can buy a candy bar.
The reality behind this contrast bears out when you look at the charts, but it becomes more explanatory.
First, gold always had a high per-dollar troy ounce value, and has gone through some amount of volatility before regaining something close to its past positions.
At the same time, we know that Bitcoin has exploded a couple of times during the past 10 years, and that its exponential value increase is based on a specific historical time chart context.
In other words, you get different results if you take a different 10-year time span, although Bitcoin has only really been in play for less than two decades.
As for future returns, you wouldn’t expect the same kind of exponential value increase to continue, although quite a few seasoned investors are calling for Bitcoin values of $100,000 or $200,000 or more within a couple of years.
The bigger picture, though, when you look at these two very different contrasting investments, is more than just price analysis.
Gold bugs like Peter Schiff who blast Bitcoin at every opportunity are promoting the permanence and stability of gold as an asset – it predates fiat currency as a tangible value that you can hold in your hand, or melt down to make jewelry.
Bitcoin is the opposite in so many ways. For example, in recent Cointelegraph coverage, we see that one of the biggest in advantage points cited by Bitcoin aficionados is that can be sent across borders. So if you’re looking for an intangible digital asset that can fly around the world in the blink of an eye, you’re looking for Bitcoin, but if you’re looking for something you can put in a vault or make into a necklace, you’re looking for gold.
In this way, it’s a mistake to only analyze prices for the two assets. Our investments are more than just a search for capital gains. They tell us things about ourselves and our core values and our ambitions. Keep that in mind if you’re trying to figure out whether to put your money into precious metals, abstracted precious metal funds, Bitcoins or secondary crypto firms.