How much is $10k invested in BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF at launch worth today?

A $10,000 bet on BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF (IBIT) at launch would be worth $19,870 today, nearly double the return of the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 and outpacing gold’s own stellar run.

However, this 98.7% gain obscures the bigger picture that IBIT holders sat on returns in excess of 150% for several months in 2025 and watched their initial stake exceed $25,000 before Bitcoin’s recent stumble below six figures pulled those gains back down.

The comparison is not close when measured over a 22-month window since IBIT’s inception on January 5, 2024.

The S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 returned a respectable 42-43%, an impressive performance considering they have returned 25% or more between them, a rarity that has only occurred three times since 1871.

Gold, driven by geopolitical anxiety and central bank buying, came closest with gains of 92-93%. But bitcoin’s trajectory has forged a very different path, defined less by steady compounding than by violent swings that rewarded conviction and punished hesitation.

The peak that wasn’t

By September 30, the same $10,000 IBIT position had made about $25,000, a 150% return in less than two years, according to BlackRock filing with SEC.

bitcoin Trading in the vicinity of $115,000 per coin by then, IBIT stock hovered around that level and the story shifted from “institutional adoption” to “how high can it go?”

The 2.5x milestone was not only an arithmetic achievement, but also a psychological vindication for allocators who endured skepticism about the place of cryptocurrencies in portfolios driven by Sharpe ratios and correlation matrices.

Then came October and Bitcoin hit a new all-time high above $126,000 with IBIT shares at $71.29 before slipping on a short-term cost base for holders.

The move set off cascading liquidations across futures markets, and the leverage that amplified the upswing accelerated the downswing.

At press time, Bitcoin was trading at $96,612.79 and IBIT at $54.84, making the September highs look like a mirage.

The draw from the top erased roughly $6,000 in paper value from the initial $10,000, a reminder that bitcoin’s uncorrelated returns are going both ways.

What the benchmarks missed

Stock indexes put in a textbook performance: The S&P 500 posted its third straight year of double-digit gains and the Nasdaq 100, fueled by the “Magnificent Seven,” posted an average 21.6% year-over-year increase in earnings.

Both suffered manageable drawdowns, trading within established ranges and confirming decades of mean value research.

Gold’s 52% year-on-year rise to November 2025 stemmed from macroeconomic dislocation, fueled by rate uncertainty, Fed suspension momentum and record central bank purchases, rather than speculative mania. Its correlation with stocks remained negative, fulfilling its role as a portfolio as designed.

IBIT offered none of this predictability, with a 98.7% profit since inception coming from a single asset bet on a no profit, no dividend, and no internal cash flow to discount protocol.

The volatility that allowed for a 150% peak also allowed for a 25% collapse in weeks. Traditional risk models would categorize this profile as unacceptable, and traditional risk-adjusted returns would penalize the path even if they recognized the target.

However, the journey matters less than the outcome for the capital invested at the outset.

An investor who bought IBIT on day one and held through the September peak, the November dip and every subsequent liquidation cascade still outperformed all major benchmarks by a margin wide enough to survive transaction costs, tax burdens and numerous moments of doubt.

This investor also saw a standard deviation in returns that would cause compliance officers to flinch and risk committees to demand an explanation.

Lever layer below

IBIT the performance doesn’t just reflect bitcoin’s price appreciation, it captures the infrastructure that’s been built around cryptocurrencies as an asset class.

The approval of the Spot ETF removed custodial risk for institutions allergic to private keys and hardware wallets.
BlackRock’s regulatory air cover provided by the brand. The CME CF benchmark bitcoin rate gave auditors a benchmark to defend against.

Together, these developments have transformed Bitcoin from “digital gold held by ideologues” to “tradable exposure tradable through Schwab.”

This wrapper mattered when bitcoin tested six numbers. The $1.2 billion in ETF inflows that ended in November did not represent panic, but rather rebalancing, profit-taking and tactical repositioning by allocators who could now treat bitcoin like any other liquid asset.

The same channels that funneled $37 billion into IBIT in the first year also allowed nearly $900 million to exit in a single day on November 13 without disrupting the market.

Liquidity is the tax that professionals pay for access, and the IBIT structure effectively collects that tax.
Futures markets revealed the rest of the story. Open interest rose to $235 billion by mid-October before contracting as long positions were unloaded. Funding rates remained muted even as prices tested support, suggesting traders reduced risk rather than doubling down.

Options distort preferred puts by 11% in implied volatility, price protection against tests below $100,000 that arrived on schedule.

Infrastructure has not prevented volatility. He simply made volatility tradable, insurable, and thus tolerable for capital, which requires both.

A benchmark that refuses to behave

Comparing IBIT to the S&P 500 or Nasdaq 100 assumes they are addressing the same mandate, which they are not.

Equity indices provide exposure to overall corporate earnings growth, diversified across sectors, with governance structures and disclosure requirements that reduce downside risk.

IBIT offers fixed delivery exposure to the currency protocol with no recourse, no need to fire the management team and no quarterly analysis guidelines. The former consists of dividend reinvestment and multiple expansion, while the latter consists of network effects and acceptance curves that either confirm the thesis or not.

Gold is closer to the spectrum, with no cash flow, no earnings, valued for its scarcity and institutional acceptance. However, gold’s 5,000-year history as a store of value gives it the characteristics of a mean of value that Bitcoin lacks.

When gold recovers 50% in a year, it is expected to revert to its long-term average. When Bitcoin recovers 150%, it is assumed to be either a paradigm shift or speculative excess, no consensus on that.

This uncertainty is the premium IBIT investors pay for asymmetry.

The 98.7% return since inception, the peak in October, and the 25% drawdown since then reflect the fact that Bitcoin’s volatility is an inherent characteristic of the asset, not a bug to be fixed.

The institutions that bought IBIT were aware of this. A nineteen-month outperformance against traditional benchmarks has made up for them holding out.

Whether this trade continues to work depends less on Fed policy or ETF flows than on whether enough capital decides the volatility is worth the value of an option embedded in a non-sovereign, program-scarce bearer asset.

For an investor who put $10,000 into IBIT at launch and now holds $19,870, the answer is already clear.

For one that sold for nearly $25,000 in September, the answer is even more precise. And for an allocator still running Monte Carlo simulations on the role of cryptocurrencies in a 60/40 portfolio, the question remains open. And that’s exactly why returns appear the way they do.