Bitcoin historically crushed silver, but a major reversal since 2021 changed everything for investors

Silver has outperformed Bitcoin since the beginning of 2021 until “today”.

Bitcoin still crushes everything from 2018 to now, but the difference comes down to regime, timing, and the kind of pain it actually endures.

Every cycle has its characteristic trades, and I felt that was evident in 2021.

Bitcoin had a story, momentum, cultural gravity, and certain advantages that made everything else seem slow. Many people bought this as a statement as well as an investment, and for a while it looked like the cleanest bet on the market.

Then something quieter happened.

If you bought silver at the beginning of 2021 and held on to the most recent weekly data points in this dataset, you would have done better than Bitcoin holders.

Not a little bit at a time, but a lot at a time.

Our numbers show that over the same span, silver returned around 322%, while Bitcoin returned 130%. This is approximately a 193 percentage point improvement in performance and approximately 84% increase in total assets for similar starting dollars.

So why did “Grandpa Metal” beat the Internet’s toughest funds, and why does Bitcoin continue to win even when zoomed out?

The short answer is timing and the long answer is that the world has changed under trade.

Data here and what we mean by “post-2018” and “post-2021”

This analysis uses weekly data for Bitcoin, crude oil, gold, silver, S&P 500 futures, and the US dollar index. May 28, 2018 through January 26, 2026.

“Since 2021” is January 4, 2021the first weekly data point after January 1st.

The returned value is a simple start-to-end percentage change using the first and last available values ​​for each period.

Resurrected since 2018, Bitcoin still wears the crown

Zoom out to the full window and the familiar sight reappears. Bitcoin has been an outstanding performer by a wide margin, and nothing else can match it.

This table is why Bitcoin has become the default benchmark in the “best asset of the decade” debate. Even after many brutal drawdowns, compound interest still dominates the long lens.

It also shows what people tend to forget when focusing solely on Bitcoin: Silver was not dead money in 2018.

It’s more than 5x larger and did it while behaving like metal. In other words, it offered the whole emotional package: long, sluggish stretches, sudden hard spikes, and ample opportunity to be shaken off.

Returns since January 2021, silver and gold lead the way

Now let’s zoom in on the world of 2020 and beyond. This world is defined by inflation headlines, interest rate shocks, and the gradual realization that liquidity will not be free forever.

This is the split screen moment.

Bitcoin wins the 2018-to-date story because it owned the first half of the decade, when the world was immersed in liquidity and risk appetite and the crypto adoption curve was at its steepest.

Silver and gold have been victorious in the 2021-to-date story as the market has started to value the price of money and the reliability of the system over pure duration and growth. Gold also had a steady tailwind from official sector buying, and central bank themes remained in the background even as the headlines changed dramatically.

Silver has its own drivers, acting like money when fear is rising and like industrial inputs when the world is being built. This is important because industrial demands related to solar power, electrification, and data infrastructure are part of the modern silver story, and the market for silver is smaller and easier to push out.

The “but” part, silver beating Bitcoin is not as easy a victory as it seems

Silver’s outperformance since the beginning of 2021 looks pretty on paper, but it rarely feels pretty when you live it.

1. Silver swing is a feature, not a bug. Gold is a tougher market than gold, which can move quickly in both directions and has a knack for punishing those who think they can own gold the same way they own index funds.
2. Entry points are more important than people give them credit for. Buyers in January 2021 caught a window of room for silver to move, and Bitcoin had already recorded a historic 2020. Moving the start date by a few months changes the story, but this applies to both assets.
3. Bitcoin still played its role. A total return of 130% over a period that includes a full rate hike cycle is not a failure, but proof that Bitcoin’s long-term bid survived a hostile macro environment. Importantly, the macro environment has changed the leaderboard.
4. “Best return” is not the same as “best hold.” The S&P 500 futures series, an equity proxy that tracks the E-mini S&P 500, has provided a much smoother ride for most investors than metals or Bitcoin, despite underperforming during this window.

Even the dollar, tracked here as DXY, plays a different game. It can dominate for long periods of time and rarely deteriorates like true risk assets. They also often signal global stress rather than providing long-term returns.

What does this tell us about the past eight years and what does it tell us about the future?

There is a human temptation in the marketplace to pick one winner and carry that around like an identity.

The Bitcoin people do it, the gold people do it, the equity people do it, and it works until the regime changes and your portfolio is no longer in line with the world.

The 2018-to-date table rewards assets that have had the steepest adoption curves and captured a decade of “digital scarcity” trading.

The 2021-to-date table rewards assets that have benefited from inflation fears, central bank actions, and the realization that supply chains and industrial inputs are once again strategic.

Both tables are two snapshots from the same movie, not the entire story.

The point is not which asset is the “best”; The question is what kind of environment you are actually in and whether you can keep what you bought when it’s no longer fun.