Buy This, Not That: Gold vs. Bitcoin – The Numbers Will Shock You

Shah Gilani|July 16, 2025

In this week’s Buy This, Not That, we’re settling the ultimate debate between traditional and digital stores of value.

Gold and Bitcoin are both up 26% this year. But scratch beneath the surface, and you’ll discover a shocking truth…

Since inflation began in January 2021, one of these assets has absolutely demolished the other. We’re talking about a 189-percentage-point difference in returns.

The winner? It might just surprise you.

Even more eye-opening: since 2009, one has averaged 100% annual returns while the other has managed just 7%.

But there’s more to this story than pure performance. Storage costs, insurance, transportation issues, and utility in the digital economy all play crucial roles.

Click on the thumbnail below to see which store of value comes out on top.

Transcript

Hey, everybody. Shah Gilani here with your weekly BTNT, as in Buy This, Not That. Today, I’m going to pit gold, the mother of all supposedly stores of value, against the other would-be latecomer to the store of value story, Bitcoin.

Yes, gold versus Bitcoin. A lot of you have asked me, is Bitcoin a store of value? Should I buy Bitcoin? Not gold.

Is gold still going to be something in the years ahead? Will people still want to buy gold? Keep it as a store of value? Will it appreciate?

So here are some answers for you. As far as gold goes, it’s having a very good year. Year to date, gold – and I’m talking about physical gold – is up 26%. So, I’m going to give it a ballpark price of $3,343 an ounce thereabouts today.

So, a heck of a year-to-date run, people. Twenty-six percent. Swamps what the S&P has done. Swamps what the Nasdaq Composite has done year to date.

Now they have had a heck of a run since the April 4 lows as far as the indexes go, but gold is swamping them year to date, up 26%.

Really sharp. Now, gold store of value – central banks are buying gold. I don’t think we’ll ever return to a gold standard. Some people say we might, but nonetheless, gold’s gold and it’s been a store of value.

It’s been a precious metal that has been sought after, hoarded, mined for years, millenniums, thousands of years. So, the problem I have with gold is there are physical storage issues if you want to hold physical gold. You might be worried about theft, you might need insurance. I know folks that have a lot of gold, physical gold, and they feel they have to insure it.

So there are costs to it. Transportation’s obviously an issue. So there are some issues with gold. But back to, does it appreciate?

Is it worthwhile to hold? Well, it certainly has been. I’m going to go back to 2021, to January of 2021, because that’s really when the inflation bout that we are still facing began. So post-COVID inflation run started in January 2021.

Since then, gold, which back then in January of 2021 was $1,895 an ounce.

Again, now we’re looking at $3,343 an ounce. So since the inflation bout began in January of 2021, gold is up 76%.

Wow, that’s a heck of an inflation hedge and a store of value for sure. That’s a pretty good run.

Now, Bitcoin, whether you think it’s a store of value or not, has limited supply relative to gold, which can continue to be mined. We don’t know ultimately how much gold there is in the earth and how much can be mined and what the supply might do – additional supply might do to the price of gold. But that is a consideration, but not with Bitcoin because we know there are only supposedly 21 million Bitcoins to be mined theoretically. Now, a lot of Bitcoins that have been mined are in wallets that people can’t even remember their passwords to get into. So, there is a limited supply to Bitcoin. It’s currently trading – I’m going to round it to $118,000 a coin.

Year to date, Bitcoin is up 26%, exactly the same as gold. So that’s a pretty even race right there.

The thing about Bitcoin, since the bout of inflation began in January of 2021, Bitcoin – if everybody thinks about this, take a guess – January 2021 was $32,183. So since inflation began, Bitcoin has risen 265%, swamping the 76% that gold is up in the same period.

Another interesting piece of information that I like about Bitcoin. Since 2009, the CAGR, compounded annual growth rate for Bitcoin is slightly more than 100% a year.

That’s for Bitcoin.

One hundred percent a year compounded annual growth rate since 2009. For gold, it’s 7%.

Yikes.

Another thing that I think makes sense about Bitcoin is it has greater utility than gold because Bitcoin can be used in financial services transactions. Bitcoin can be used in DeFi. Bitcoin can be used – it’s got financial services applications like staking, for example, lending.

Pretty hard to lend against gold if you own gold, physical gold. There are ways to do it, but you have to do it through the conventional ways. Bitcoin, there are a lot of different ways that you can get into staking and you can get into lending. Especially through DeFi channels.

So, it’s got greater application in that sense and I think there will probably be further use cases for Bitcoin as we go forward in the decentralized financial world that we are deeply heading into. So I’m going to say between Bitcoin and gold, I wouldn’t say don’t buy gold, but I would say buy Bitcoin. Yes, it’s more speculative, but the opportunity in Bitcoin, I think, dwarfs the opportunity in gold in terms of appreciation.

Yes, is it more speculative in my opinion? Indeed. Is it worth the extra speculative fever that sometimes accompanies it and the winters that sometimes accompany it? Yeah.

It’s proven to be worth it. So when it comes to gold versus Bitcoin, I say, buy Bitcoin and hold on to your gold.

That’s it for today. Catch you guys next week. Cheers.