What $10,000 in BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF at Launch Would Be Worth Today

The short version (and the jaw-dropper)

If you plunked down $10,000 into BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF (IBIT) when it launched, that stake would be worth about $19,870 today — almost doubling your money and outpacing the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 over the same period. It even nudged past gold’s impressive run.

But don’t get too comfy: that near-100% gain hides a wilder subplot. For a few months in 2025, IBIT holders watched their original $10k swell to more than $25k — a peak of roughly 150% — before Bitcoin’s slide back below six figures pulled much of that glitter off the table.

The roller-coaster details (numbers, drama, repeat)

IBIT kicked off on Jan. 5, 2024, and over the roughly 22 months since, the comparison to traditional assets has been stark. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 delivered solid returns in the low‑40% range, while gold posted gains in the low‑90s — steady, predictable, and boring in the best possible way.

Bitcoin’s story was different: by September, that $10k IBIT position swelled to about $25k as Bitcoin flirted with roughly $115,000 per coin. Then October amped things up — Bitcoin briefly topped $126,000 and IBIT touched about $71.29 before a fast unwind smashed through short-term holders’ cost bases. As prices retraced, Bitcoin settled near the mid six-figure range and IBIT around $54.84, wiping roughly $6,000 in paper gains off each original $10k.

Meanwhile, equity markets kept doing what they do: making steady compounded gains, modest drawdowns, and satisfying the folks who like predictability. Gold rallied hard too, driven by geopolitics, central bank buying, and macro weirdness; it behaved like the portfolio ballast it’s supposed to be. IBIT, by contrast, was pure single‑asset theater — no earnings, no dividends, just supply, demand, and a lot of feeling.

That new ETF wrapper changed the game. Spot ETF approval removed custody headaches for institutions that don’t want private keys, and a familiar brand name gave allocators the regulatory comfort to buy exposure through brokerage accounts. That convenience helped funnel billions in — about $37 billion into IBIT in its first year — while also allowing rapid exits when traders wanted to take profits or rebalance. You could see huge inflows, then a billion-plus move out in a month, or nearly $900 million on a single heavy day, all without the whole market collapsing.

The derivatives market told the same tale: open interest ballooned into the hundreds of billions at the peak, funding rates stayed relatively calm, and options priced modest protection with a noticeable tilt toward puts. In short: the infrastructure made the volatility tradable and insurable, but it didn’t erase the volatility.

So yes, if you bought on day one and held through the peaks and troughs, you ended up well ahead of traditional benchmarks. But you also rode a stomach‑churning wave of drawdowns that would make any risk committee ask for mercy.

The bottom line: the nearly 99% return since inception, the October 150% peak, and the subsequential 25% swoon are all just different sides of the same coin — Bitcoin’s signature volatility. For those who treat that volatility as a feature rather than a bug, the payoff so far has justified the headache. For everyone else, it’s a high‑maintenance asset class that demands nerves (and a strong spreadsheet).

Whether this trade keeps paying off depends less on any single central‑bank decision and more on whether enough capital decides that the option‑like upside of a scarce, non‑sovereign asset is worth the daily adrenaline. If your answer to that is “yes,” congratulations — you’re probably still holding. If it’s “nope,” then selling at the peak sounded like a pretty decent idea.