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 stellar run.

However, that 98.7% gain masks the bigger picture that, for several months into 2025, IBIT holders were sitting on returns exceeding 150%, watching their initial stake balloon over $25,000 before Bitcoin’s recent crash below six figures pulled those gains to the ground.

The comparison is not close when measured over the 22-month window from the start of the IBIT on January 5, 2024.

The S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 returned a respectable 42-43%, an impressive feat since they have posted consecutive years of 25% or more, a rarity that has only happened three times since 1871.

Gold, driven by geopolitical anxiety and central bank buying, came closest with gains of 92-93%. Yet Bitcoin’s trajectory has carved an entirely different path, one defined less by stable composure than by violent swings that reward conviction and punish hesitation.

The peak that was not

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

Bitcoin traded near $115,000 per coin since then, IBIT’s stock hovered around that level, and the narrative shifted from “institutional adoption” to “how far can it go?”

The 2.5x step represented not only arithmetical success, but the psychological claim for allocators who suffer skepticism about the place of crypto in portfolios governed by Sharpe ratios and correlation matrices.

Then came October, and Bitcoin registered a new all-time high above $126,000, with IBIT shares at a price of $71.29, before sliding through its short-term holder cost basis.

The move triggered cascading liquidations in the futures markets, and the leverage that amplified the climb accelerated the descent.

At press time, Bitcoin traded at $96,612.79, and IBIT traded at $54.84, making those September highs seem like a mirage.

The drawdown from the peak wiped out about $6,000 in paper value per initial $10,000 invested, a reminder that Bitcoin’s uncorrelated returns cut both ways.

What the benchmarks lacked

Equity indices delivered textbook performance: the S&P 500 achieved its third consecutive year of double-digit gains, and the Nasdaq 100, powered by the “Magnificent Seven”, saw average earnings growth of 21.6% year-on-year.

Both suffered manageable drawdowns, traded in set ranges, and validated decades of mean reversion research.

Gold’s 52% rise in the year to November 2025 stemmed from a macroeconomic dislocation, fueled by tariff uncertainty, the Fed’s pause dynamics, and record central bank buying, rather than speculative mania. Its correlation with stocks was negative, fulfilling its role as a portfolio as designed.

IBIT offered none of that predictability, with a 98.7% gain from the start stemming from a single-asset bet on a no-earning, no-dividend, no-discounted intrinsic cash flow protocol.

The volatility that allowed for a 150% peak also allowed for a 25% collapse in weeks. Traditional risk models categorize that profile as unacceptable, and traditional risk-adjusted returns will penalize the path even when they recognize the destination.

However, the path matters less than the result for the capital deployed at the beginning.

The investor who bought IBIT on the first day and held through the September peak, the November pullback, and every subsequent liquidation cascade have always surpassed every major reference point by a wide enough margin to survive the transaction costs, the fiscal drag and many moments of doubt.

That investor also experienced a standard deviation in returns that had compliance officers scrambling and risk committees demanding explanations.

The layer of leverage below

The IBIT The performance doesn’t just reflect Bitcoin’s price appreciation, it captures the infrastructure that has been built around the crypto as an asset class instead.

The approval of the Spot ETF has eliminated the custodial risk for institutions allergic to private keys and hardware wallets.
BlackRock mark provided a regulatory air cover. The CME CF Bitcoin Reference Rate gave auditors a benchmark they could defend.

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

That wrapper mattered when Bitcoin tested six figures. The $1.2 billion ETF inflows coming out in November do not represent panic, but rather rebalancing, profiteering and tactical repositioning by allocators who may now treat Bitcoin like any other liquid asset.

The same pipes that channeled $37 billion in IBIT in its first year also allowed almost $900 million to exit in a single day on November 13, without breaking the market.

Liquidity is the tax that professionals pay for access, and the IBIT structure efficiently collects that tax.
Futures markets told the rest of the story. Open interest swelled to $235 billion in mid-October before contracting as long positions were unwound. Funding rates were lower even when prices tested support, indicating that traders took risks rather than doubling down.

The options offset the favorite puts by 11% in the implied volatility, price protection against the tests under $100K that came in the calendar.

Infrastructure has not prevented volatility. It simply made volatility tradable, insurable, and therefore tolerable for the capital that requires both.

The benchmark that refuses to behave

Comparing IBIT to the S&P 500 or Nasdaq 100 assumes that they settle for the same mandate, which they do not.

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

IBIT offers exposure to a fixed supply monetary protocol with no recourse, no management team to fire, and no quarterly guidance to analyze. The first compounds for the reinvestment of dividends and the multiple expansion, while the last compounds for the network effects and the adoption curves that validate the thesis or not.

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

When gold rallies by 50% in a year, the assumption is that it will return to its long-term average. When Bitcoin rallies 150%, the assumption is either a paradigm shift or speculative excess, with no consensus on which.

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 all reflect the fact that Bitcoin’s volatility is an inherent asset characteristic, not an engineered bug.

The institutions that purchased IBIT were aware of this. The 19-month outperformance against traditional benchmarks has compensated them for enduring it.

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

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

For one that sold at nearly $25,000 in September, the answer is still more accurate. And for the allocator who also runs Monte Carlo simulations on the role of crypto in a 60/40 portfolio, the question remains open. And this is exactly why the returns appear as.