TechFlow, Aug 10 — According to CoinDesk, bitcoin is up 25% year-to-date in 2025, ranking second among major asset classes, just behind gold's 29.3% gain.
Data shared by financial strategist Charlie Bilello shows more modest performance for other major asset classes in 2025: emerging market equities (VWO) rose 15.6%, Nasdaq-100 (QQQ) gained 12.7%, U.S. large-cap stocks (SPY) increased 9.4%, while U.S. mid-cap (MDY) and small-cap (IWM) stocks rose only 0.8% and 0.2% respectively. This marks the first time on record that gold and bitcoin have simultaneously taken the top two spots in the annual asset class rankings.
In the long term, bitcoin has delivered an astonishing cumulative return of 38,897,420% since 2011, outperforming all other asset classes by a wide margin. Over the same period, gold posted a cumulative return of 126%, placing in the middle—behind the Nasdaq-100 (1,101%), U.S. large caps (559%), mid caps (316%), and small caps (244%).
According to Bilello’s data, bitcoin’s total return has exceeded that of gold by over 308,000 times over the past 14 years.
In terms of annualized returns, bitcoin has averaged 141.7% per year since 2011, compared to 5.7% for gold, 18.6% for the Nasdaq-100, and 13.8% for U.S. large-cap stocks.
