Bitcoin historically crushed silver but a huge flip since 2021 has changed everything for investors
Silver has now outperformed Bitcoin from early 2021 to “today.”
While Bitcoin still crushes the full 2018-to-now window, the difference comes down to regime, timing, and the kind of pain you can actually hold through.
Every cycle has its signature trade, in 2021 it felt obvious.
Bitcoin had the story, the momentum, the cultural gravity, and the kind of upside that made everything else look slow. Plenty of people bought it as a statement as much as an investment, and for a while, it looked like the cleanest bet in markets.
Then something quieter happened.
If you bought silver at the start of 2021 and held to the latest weekly datapoint in this dataset, you did better than the Bitcoin holder.
Not by a little, by a lot.
In our numbers, silver returned about 322% versus Bitcoin’s 130% over the same span, that is roughly 193 percentage points of extra performance, and about 84% more total wealth on a like-for-like starting dollar.
So why did the “grandpa metal” beat the internet’s hardest money, and why does Bitcoin still win when you zoom out?
The short answer is timing, the longer answer is the world changed under the trade.
The data and what “since 2018” and “since 2021” mean here
This analysis uses weekly data for Bitcoin, crude oil, gold, silver, S&P 500 futures, and the U.S. Dollar Index, running from May 28, 2018 through January 26, 2026.
“Since 2021” begins on January 4, 2021, the first weekly datapoint after January 1.
Returns are simple start-to-end percentage changes, using the first and last available values in each period.
Returns since 2018, Bitcoin still wears the crown
Zoom out to the full window, and it looks familiar again. Bitcoin is the standout performer, by a wide margin, and nothing else is close.
| Asset | Total return |
|---|---|
| Bitcoin (BTCUSD) | +1,036.5% |
| Silver | +554.9% |
| Gold | +292.8% |
| S&P 500 futures (ES1!) | +156.2% |
| U.S. Dollar Index (DXY) | +2.3% |
| Oil (OILUSD) | -6.8% |
That table is the reason Bitcoin became the default benchmark for “best asset of the decade” arguments. Even after multiple brutal drawdowns, the compounding still dominates the long lens.
It also shows something people forget when they focus only on Bitcoin, silver was not dead money in the 2018s.
It more than quintupled, and it did so while behaving like a metal, meaning it delivered the full emotional package: long, dull stretches, sudden violent spikes, and plenty of chances to get shaken out.
Returns since January 2021, silver and gold take the lead
Now zoom in on the post-2020 world, the one defined by inflation headlines, rate shocks, and the slow realization that liquidity was not going to be free forever.
| Asset | Total return |
|---|---|
| Silver | +322.3% |
| Gold | +174.7% |
| Bitcoin (BTCUSD) | +129.5% |
| S&P 500 futures (ES1!) | +83.5% |
| Oil (OILUSD) | +17.2% |
| U.S. Dollar Index (DXY) | +6.9% |
This is the split-screen moment.
Bitcoin wins the 2018-to-now story because it owned the early part of the decade, when the world was drenched in liquidity and risk appetite, and when crypto’s adoption curve was steepest.
Silver and gold win the 2021-to-now story because the market started caring more about the price of money and the credibility of the system, and less about pure duration and growth. Gold also had a steady tailwind from official sector buying, with the central banks theme staying in the background even when headlines moved on.
Silver had its own mix of drivers, it behaves like money when fear is high, and like an industrial input when the world is building. Industrial demand linked to solar, electrification, and data infrastructure has been part of the modern silver narrative, and it matters because silver’s market is smaller and more easily pushed around.
The “but” part, silver beating Bitcoin is not the easy win it looks like
Silver’s outperformance since early 2021 looks clean in a table, living through it rarely feels clean.
- Silver’s swings are a feature, not a bug. It is a tighter market than gold, it can move fast in both directions, and it has a talent for punishing anyone who thinks they can hold it the same way they hold an index fund.
- The entry point matters more than people admit. A January 2021 buyer caught a window where silver had room to run, and Bitcoin had already logged a historic 2020. Shift the start date by a few months, change the story, that is true for both assets.
- Bitcoin still did its job. A 130% total return across a period that included a full rate hiking cycle is not failure, it is evidence that Bitcoin’s long term bid survived a hostile macro environment. The point is that the macro environment changed the leaderboard.
- “Best return” is not the same as “best hold.” The S&P 500 futures series, an equity proxy tied to the E-mini S&P 500, gave a much smoother ride than either metal or Bitcoin for most investors, even while it underperformed them in this window.
Even the dollar, tracked here as DXY, plays a different game. It can dominate for stretches, it rarely compounds the way a true risk asset does, and it is often telling you about global stress more than it is offering you a long-term return.
What this says about the last eight years, and what it says about the next
There is a human temptation in markets to pick one winner and carry it like an identity.
Bitcoin people do it, gold people do it, equity people do it, and it works right up until the regime shifts and the portfolio stops matching the world.
The 2018-to-now table rewards the asset that went through the steepest adoption curve and captured the decade’s “digital scarcity” trade.
The 2021-to-now table rewards the assets that benefited from inflation anxiety, central bank behavior, and the realization that supply chains and industrial inputs are strategic again.
Neither table is the whole story, they are two snapshots from the same movie.
If you want a single takeaway, it is this: the question is not which asset is “the best,” the question is which environment you are actually in, and whether you can hold the thing you bought when it stops being fun.
