BTC vs Gold: The DCA Backtest
The identical plan — $100 on the first trading day of each month — run on both assets over their shared history (Sep 2014 → Aug 2026, $14,400 invested each). Every number below is computed from real daily closes; nothing is annualized away or cherry-picked.
Verdict on this window: $14,400 invested into BTC grew to $712,622, versus $41,397 in Gold. Different start dates shuffle this result — the rolling analysis below shows how often.
The same $100/month, side by side
Both positions month by month across the shared window: the dashed line is cash paid in ($14,400 total), the two curves are what BTC and Gold were worth along the way. Where the curves separate is where the decade's story lives.
Does the winner depend on when you started?
One full-window result can mislead — maybe the winner just had a better final year. So we ran the head-to-head across EVERY possible 5-year start month in the shared history:
Side-by-side numbers
Data through Aug 2026, refreshed daily.
The 5,000-year hedge versus the 15-year one
This is the store-of-value debate in one chart. Since 2014, monthly buys of Bitcoin obliterated gold's return — but look at the drawdown columns: gold's worst 5-year window is a shallow dip, Bitcoin's is a crater. They are not competing on the same axis: gold hedges with low volatility and five millennia of precedent; BTC compensated its violence with growth, over a sample containing exactly one adoption cycle.
The rolling head-to-head shows Bitcoin winning most — but not all — start months, and the ones gold wins cluster around crypto winters, precisely when a hedge is supposed to work. Which is the argument many portfolios settle on: this pair is an allocation question, not an either/or, and the honest version sizes BTC by the drawdown you can survive, not the return you hope repeats.
FAQ
On the shared window measured here, BTC finished ahead (BTC: +4849% vs Gold: +187% on identical monthly buys). "Better" is window-dependent — the rolling head-to-head above tells you how stable that verdict was. Past performance doesn't predict the future; this page tells you what happened, not what will.
Yes, and if the pair is highly correlated the blend will behave like either one alone — check how similar the two curves above are before assuming a split adds diversification. Our portfolio calculator lets you backtest any weighting of the two on the same real data.
Real dividend- and split-adjusted daily closes for BTC and Gold, compared strictly over their shared history (Sep 2014 → Aug 2026), refreshed daily and validated for gaps and staleness. Fees, spreads and taxes are not modelled — see the methodology page.
Run the plan on a real exchange
Five exchanges where DCA — and tokenized stocks & ETFs — actually work, each with a real discount. Pick one, copy the code, trade cheaper.
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