Bitcoin vs S&P 500

Data to 2026-09-22. On-chain metrics are fetched on a rotation, so this can trail the build by a few days.

How to read it

Bitcoin against US equities, both rebased to 100 on one log axis. Useful context for the common claim that Bitcoin trades as a high-beta risk asset — over long horizons the two have diverged enormously, while over short ones they have often moved together.

How it's calculated

Each series divided by its own first value and multiplied by 100, no offset, one shared axis.

What it did in past cycles

Both indexed to 100 at 2014-09-17. At the anchors: 4,263 vs 133.5 (2017-12-16), 14,770 vs 234.6 (2021-11-08), 27,280 vs 336.4 (2025-10-06).

The period since the October 2025 peak is the one that complicates the risk-asset story. Bitcoin fell to 12,800 by 2026-06-30 while the S&P index reading rose to 371.1 — a drawdown of more than half in one, a gain in the other, over the same eight months. Whatever relationship holds week to week, it did not hold here.

Equities also spent the 2015 and 2018–19 stretches ahead of Bitcoin on a since-inception basis, which is worth remembering before treating the gap as permanent.

What it doesn't tell you

The S&P 500 series here excludes dividends, which understates equity returns by roughly two percent a year. As with any indexed comparison, the start date drives the outcome, and correlation over short windows is not visible in a chart of cumulative performance.

A chart of cumulative performance is also the wrong tool for the high-beta question it is often used to answer. Two lines can end far apart while moving together day to day, which is precisely the case here. To see whether Bitcoin trades as a risk asset you need a rolling correlation of daily returns, which is a different chart and one this page does not attempt.

The comparison is not like-for-like in another respect either. The S&P 500 is a claim on the earnings of five hundred businesses, which grow, pay dividends and can be valued against those earnings. Bitcoin produces no cash flow. They are being compared on price alone because that is the only axis they share.

Reading it with other metrics

Realized volatility is the necessary companion — Bitcoin's cumulative outperformance came with volatility several times the S&P's, and this chart shows only one of those two facts.

Bitcoin vs gold is the same comparison against a non-productive asset, and Bitcoin vs US M2 against the money supply both are priced in.