Bitcoin's compound annual growth is 'an unheard-of' 200% CAGR

Bitcoin (BTC) has delivered returns that are “unheard of” in history and ultimately leave Tesla stock in the dust. 

That’s according to fresh data from on-chain monitoring resource CaseBitcoin, which this week delved into Bitcoin’s astonishing compound annual growth rate (CAGR).

BTC hodling: 10 years, 5,200,000% returns

A familiar phrase among crypto and traditional investors alike, CAGR is often overlooked as an overly simple gauge of Bitcoin’s performance versus other assets.

In its 12-year existence, however, the largest cryptocurrency has achieved so much that it has, in fact, outperformed everything by an order of magnitude. It barely fits on the scale.

As CaseBitcoin summarized, at 196.7%, Bitcoin’s 10-year CAGR “is unmatched in financial history.”

“This is an unheard-of number. This means that bitcoin has returned almost 200% (so nearly tripled your money), every single year for 10 years, *compounded*,” the firm wrote in a series of tweets accompanying the figures.

“In raw ROI terms, that works out to 5.2 *million* % return over the decade.”

CAGR is calculated using the return on investment (ROI) between two dates and working out the average compound return per year that results.

Comparing Bitcoin with gold, the S&P 500, the Nasdaq composite index and long-dated U.S. Treasurys, along with Tesla and Amazon stock, CaseBitcoin showed the extent to which Bitcoin is in a different league — and has been since its creation.

Second to BTC, for example, is Tesla stock, which has a 10-year CAGR of 63.8%. In third place is Amazon with 33.5%.

“Ok, but bitcoin was tiny 10yrs ago, and maybe 10yrs happens to be a cherry-picked timeframe…” CaseBitcoin added in defence of CAGR as a valuable yardstick.

“Nope. Bitcoin's CAGR dwarfs other benchmarks over ANY multi-year period in the past decade.”

Saylor predicts gold "demonetization"

The stark figures fuel an existing narrative among some of the Bitcoin world’s best-known, most-exposed investors. Notably among them is MicroStrategy, which this week added to its existing stack of over 90,000 BTC.

In August 2020, when the company first announced the conversion of its treasury from cash to Bitcoin, CEO Michael Saylor began to stress the fact that nothing offered comparable returns to Bitcoin or shielded capital from cash inflation. Today, his argument is no different.

“Bitcoin has outperformed Gold by 100x over the past decade,” a tweet from Monday reads.

“The next decade will witness the complete digital transformation of gold to bitcoin, and the demonetization of the precious metals asset class.”

MicroStrategy is far from the first to realize the potential in long-term Bitcoin investment. Cointelegraph has been reporting on CAGR prospects since before its 2017 bull run to $20,000.