Buying BTC is inferior to buying the Nasdaq — this statement has an expiration date.

Original Author: Kuri, TechFlow by Shenchao

The esteemed US stock traders have had a rather comfortable six months.

The S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 have repeatedly hit historic highs. The narrative around AI capital expenditure keeps growing, and account net values rise accordingly. In contrast, Bitcoin has retraced from $126,000 in October last year to around $80,000, a drop of 37%. For holders, the feeling likely boils down to two words:

Agony.

This emotional gap is fermenting on social media into a new narrative: Investing in US tech stocks is simply better than buying Bitcoin, and most of the time it is.

On Reddit's crypto board today, a post has even crystalized this sentiment. A user posted a comparison chart showing that over the past 5 years, the Nasdaq 100 has risen 132.8%, while Bitcoin has only gained 43.8%.

It's important to note that this chart uses the European DD/MM/YYYY date format. The actual window is from May 12, 2021, to May 12, 2026, based on a Euro-denominated ETF.

Since 2021, the US dollar has appreciated by about 18% against the Euro. From a Euro perspective, the gains in dollar-denominated assets have been further amplified by the exchange rate effect. Calculated in bare US dollar terms, the Nasdaq 100 has risen by approximately 121% over the same period, while Bitcoin is up about 43%. The gap remains significant.

The OP's own summary was even more biting, "What the hell is going on? I guess the answer is that AI changed everything."

Bloomberg ran a similar report back in February this year, with an even less forgiving title: *Bitcoin's Five-Year Return Trails S&P 500, Nasdaq 100, and Gold*.

Investing Has a Shelf Life

The starting point for the 5-year window in the chart above is December 2021.

At that time, Bitcoin had just fallen from its cycle high of $69,000 to around $48,000, while the Nasdaq 100 was at approximately 16,300 points, and the AI narrative hadn't kicked off yet. This means Bitcoin's starting line was set on a high platform near the tail end of a bull market, whereas the Nasdaq's starting line was set on the eve of the AI super-cycle.

Emotionally, it's understandable to promote US stocks as stronger than BTC. But is that really the case when you extend the data a bit further? If you move the starting point back or forward a few months or years, the winner-loser relationship flips dramatically.

We did a simple little analysis. The following five time windows all end in May 2026 (BTC at ~$80,000, Nasdaq 100 at ~29,000 points). The starting points correspond to five key milestones in the crypto and macro markets:

COVID Bottom (March 2020) → Now:

Bitcoin rose from ~$5,800 to $80,000, a gain of approximately 1,279%. The Nasdaq 100 rose from ~7,000 to 29,000 points, a gain of approximately 314%. Bitcoin's return was over 4 times that of the Nasdaq.

FTX Collapse Bottom (November 2022) → Now:

Bitcoin rose from ~$16,000 to $80,000, a gain of approximately 400%. The Nasdaq 100 rose from ~11,500 to 29,000 points, a gain of approximately 152%. Bitcoin's return was still 2.6 times that of the Nasdaq.

Eve of Bitcoin ETF Approval (January 2024) → Now:

Bitcoin rose from ~$44,000 to $80,000, a gain of approximately 82%. The Nasdaq 100 rose from ~16,800 to 29,000 points, a gain of approximately 73%. They were almost neck and neck, with Bitcoin having a slight edge.

This Tech Stock Cycle (May 2021) → Now:

Bitcoin rose from ~$48,000 to $80,000, a gain of approximately 67%. The Nasdaq 100 rose from ~16,300 to 29,000 points, a gain of approximately 78%. The Nasdaq leads.

Bitcoin All-Time High (October 2025) → Now:

Bitcoin fell from ~$126,000 to $80,000, a decline of approximately 37%. The Nasdaq 100 rose from ~22,000 to 29,000 points, a gain of approximately 32%. The Nasdaq leads significantly, and the direction is completely opposite.

So the conclusion is: Out of the five windows, Bitcoin wins in three, and the Nasdaq wins in two. The Reddit post happened to pick one of the windows where the Nasdaq has the highest probability of winning.

Cyclical Assets vs. Trend Assets

The difference in sensitivity to the starting point between Bitcoin and the Nasdaq 100 stems from their fundamentally distinct volatility structures.

The Nasdaq 100 is composed of 500 large, non-financial companies backed by cash flow and earnings, exhibiting a long-term upward trend. Even after a 33% drawdown in 2022, its recovery was relatively steady.

Choosing any non-extreme starting point results in long-term returns falling within a relatively stable range.

Bitcoin, on the other hand, is a classic cyclical asset. Historically, drawdowns from peak to trough in each bull-bear cycle range between 75% and 85% (as seen in 2014, 2018, and 2022). The retracement from October 2025 to early 2026 also reached about 50%.

This violent volatility means that where the starting point falls within the cycle almost determines the final return number.

An analysis from Nasdaq.com put it more bluntly: Bitcoin is essentially a levered version of the S&P 500.

In 2024, the S&P rose 24%, Bitcoin rose 135%. In 2023, the S&P rose 26%, Bitcoin rose 147%. In 2022, the S&P fell 19%, Bitcoin fell 65%. Same direction, but the magnitude is amplified by 3 to 5 times.

This means that choosing a starting point that happens to be at the top of a Bitcoin cycle to compare and concluding that 'stocks outperform Bitcoin' is almost statistically inevitable. The reverse is also true.

Current BTC: Potentially in a 'Cyclical Undervaluation Zone'

Putting the starting point game aside, the current market structure itself deserves attention.

After peaking in October 2025, Bitcoin underwent a typical cyclical correction. It briefly fell to around $65,000 in February 2026, before rebounding to near $80,000, still down about 37% from its high. During the same period, the Nasdaq 100 repeatedly hit new highs, driven by the continuous expansion of AI capital expenditure.

This divergence isn't uncommon historically. During Bitcoin's rally from $3,000 to $12,000 in 2019, it was almost completely decoupled from the S&P 500. In 2022, both crashed in sync, with correlation spiking to 0.92. The correlation between the crypto market and US stocks is dynamic and cyclical, not a fixed positive correlation.

Alex Thorn, Head of Research at Galaxy Digital, proposed an interesting perspective in December 2025:

Measured by 2020 dollar purchasing power, Bitcoin's nominal high of $126,000 never actually broke through $100,000. Cumulative inflation from 2020 to 2025 was about 24%, which introduces a systematic bias into any nominal price comparison across different years.

At a time when Bitcoin is down 37% from its all-time high and the US stock index is simultaneously hitting new all-time highs, the narrative that 'stocks are outperforming Bitcoin' will naturally dominate social media.

But in the past, each time this narrative was loudest, it generally coincided with the bottom zone of a Bitcoin cycle. After the FTX collapse in late 2022, similar 'Bitcoin is dead' rhetoric was rife, yet over the next 18 months, Bitcoin surged from $16,000 to $126,000.

Hindsight is easy; placing a bet early is hard. Arguing over which asset has a larger gain is meaningless at a micro level. Any conclusion like 'A is always better than B' derived from a single time window cannot withstand the test of shifting the starting point.

Each generation has its champion asset, but across generations, the real difficulty lies in timing and taking profits.