Investing does not always require finding the perfect bottom or predicting the next market crash. Sometimes, consistently putting aside the same amount of money can produce surprisingly large results.
A comparison circulating among investors shows what would have happened if someone had invested $500 every month since 2020 across Bitcoin, gold, silver and major U.S. stock indexes.
With approximately $40,000 contributed over the period, the estimated portfolio values today would look like this:
- Bitcoin: $108,100
- Silver: $100,200
- Gold: $82,400
- Nasdaq: $79,200
- S&P 500: $71,100
Bitcoin comes out on top, turning the roughly $40,000 of contributions into more than $108,000. That is about $68,000 above the amount originally invested.
Gold would have produced a considerably smaller (but still substantial) result of approximately $82,400, more than doubling the investor’s contributions.
Perhaps the biggest surprise is silver. At roughly $100,200, the metal comes surprisingly close to Bitcoin in this particular comparison and finishes comfortably ahead of gold and both stock indexes.
If you had started putting just $500 a month into these assets in 2020, here’s where you’d stand today:
— Fthegurus (@fthegurus) August 29, 2026
– Silver: $100,200.
– Gold: $82,400.
– Nasdaq: $79,200.
– S&P500: $71,100.
– Bitcoin: $108,100.
Cash you invested: $40,000.
The biggest risk most people take isn’t…
$500 a Month Removes the Need to Find the Perfect Entry
The strategy behind the numbers is commonly called dollar-cost averaging, or DCA.
Instead of trying to determine whether Bitcoin, gold or stocks are currently cheap or expensive, an investor puts the same dollar amount into the asset at regular intervals. When prices fall, $500 buys more units; when prices rise, it buys fewer.
The approach can reduce the importance of getting any single entry exactly right, although it does not guarantee a profit or protect against losses.
That distinction matters particularly for Bitcoin.
Anyone following this strategy since 2020 would have bought BTC during the enormous 2021 bull market, the brutal 2022 collapse and the subsequent recovery. Some monthly purchases would therefore have looked terrible shortly after they were made.
Yet continuing to buy through those declines meant accumulating more Bitcoin at substantially lower prices.
The same principle applies to gold. Rather than waiting years for the “perfect” entry, the investor gradually accumulated exposure through several different market environments.
Read also: Bitcoin Price Warning: Small BTC Holders Are Selling, Whales Are Doing the Opposite
Bitcoin and Gold Have Something in Common
Bitcoin and gold are very different assets, but their recent performance has increasingly been discussed through the same macroeconomic lens.
Both have benefited at times from concerns surrounding inflation, government debt, currency debasement and confidence in traditional monetary systems. Most recently, Bitcoin’s rally above $80,000 coincided with renewed demand for both physical and digital alternatives to the dollar.
Their risk profiles, however, remain dramatically different.
Bitcoin’s volatility means investors can experience enormous drawdowns along the way. Gold generally moves much more slowly and has a much longer history as a monetary and defensive asset.
That makes the comparison less about declaring one universally “better” than the other and more about showing what consistency plus time can accomplish.
There is also an important caveat to the headline numbers: the exact result of a $500-per-month strategy depends on the precise starting date, purchase date each month, fees, asset or instrument used, and the valuation date. The figures above should therefore be treated as the results of the stated comparison rather than universal DCA returns.
Still, the broader point is difficult to miss.
The investor didn’t need to predict Bitcoin’s bottom, know when gold would rally or perfectly time the stock market. They simply needed to keep investing $500 month after month, including during periods when doing so probably felt uncomfortable.
In this example, roughly $40,000 in contributions became $108,100 in Bitcoin or $82,400 in gold.
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