$100/Month for 5 Years: Gold Beat Bitcoin. Then I Looked at Diamonds.
A DCA simulation over 5 years shows gold nearly doubled while Bitcoin barely broke even. Then I looked at diamonds — and discovered a market with no real price at all.
$100/Month for 5 Years: Gold Beat Bitcoin. Then I Looked at Diamonds.
A simple thought experiment: what if you invested $100 every month for five years into three different "stores of value" — Bitcoin, gold, and diamonds? Not a lump sum, just a steady $100 a month, automatically, rain or shine. Dollar-cost averaging.
I ran the numbers for BTC and gold. Then I got curious about diamonds. That's where it got interesting.
The Setup
Period: February 2021 → February 2026
Monthly investment: $100 per asset
Total invested per asset: $6,000
Strategy: DCA — same day, every month, no timing
BTC vs. Gold: 5 Years of $100/Month
The results:
- Bitcoin: $6,000 invested → $6,651 final value (~+11%)
- Gold: $6,000 invested → $10,001 final value (~+67%)
Gold nearly doubled your money. Bitcoin barely broke even — at least with a consistent monthly DCA over this particular five-year window.
This isn't a hit piece on Bitcoin. Timing matters enormously with BTC, and the chart shows just how violently it swings — a dramatic run-up to 2025 peaks, then a sharp correction. If you had started a year earlier, or held through 2025, the numbers would look very different. That's exactly the risk DCA is supposed to smooth out. And yet, gold still won this round.
Gold, the boring old metal, quietly compounded while BTC was on a rollercoaster.
Then I Looked at Diamonds
Curious whether diamonds could fit a similar comparison, I pulled up a 1-carat diamond price chart.
A 1-carat diamond is sitting around $4,037 today. That's down from a peak near $4,800 earlier this year. But here's where the entire exercise falls apart:
There is no standardized, transparent price for diamonds.
Unlike gold — which has a globally traded spot price that's the same whether you're in Tokyo, London, or Istanbul — diamond pricing depends almost entirely on who's selling, who's buying, and what story is being told about the stone. Shape matters. Color matters. Treatment history matters. Whether it's been processed matters. Whether the seller calls it "special" matters.
Try to compare two diamonds and you'll quickly realize that prices are interpretations, not facts. Just look at the price ranges for a single 1-carat stone depending on cut alone:
| Cut | Price Range (1 carat) |
|---|---|
| Round Brilliant | $2,500 – $16,500 |
| Princess | $1,600 – $11,000 |
| Cushion | $1,500 – $9,500 |
| Emerald | $1,400 – $10,500 |
| Oval | $1,600 – $10,000 |
| Radiant | $1,600 – $7,000 |
| Asscher | $1,600 – $6,900 |
| Marquise | $1,700 – $10,000 |
| Heart | $1,700 – $12,000 |
| Pear | $1,700 – $11,400 |
The same 1-carat diamond could be worth $1,400 or $16,500 depending on who cut it and how they described it. That's not a market. That's a mood board.
The System Is Designed to Favor the Seller
This isn't an accident. Rough price ranges exist, but a universally accepted pricing mechanism doesn't.
When the entity setting the price is always the seller — and the buyer is always working with incomplete information — the system structurally advantages one side.
The buyer pays for the story: the shape, the provenance, the brand, the emotional weight of the occasion. All of that is real. But none of it is investment-grade transparency.
Gold has a spot price. Bitcoin has an exchange price. Diamonds have a negotiation.
What Makes Something a Good Store of Value?
A few things matter:
- Liquidity — can you sell it quickly at a fair price?
- Price transparency — do you know what it's really worth?
- Standardization — is a unit always the same unit?
- Global market — can buyers and sellers find each other easily?
Gold and Bitcoin both pass these tests reasonably well, despite their very different risk profiles. Diamonds fail most of them.
An ounce of gold is the same everywhere. One bitcoin is the same everywhere. A one-carat diamond? Depends entirely on which one, who examined it, and who's selling it.
The Takeaway
Gold quietly outperformed Bitcoin in a 5-year DCA scenario — the asset almost nobody under 40 talks about anymore.
Diamonds look like an investment on the surface, but the market is structured so that the price is almost always whatever the seller decides it is. The sparkle is real. The investment thesis is not.
The most interesting insight isn't which asset won. It's that the least "exciting" asset — the one with the clearest, most boring price mechanism — ended up being the safest bet over this window.
Transparency isn't glamorous. But it's the foundation of a functioning market.