Here's How Much Bitcoin Has Surged Past the S&P 500 Since the 2020 Covid Crash

A $10,000 investment in Bitcoin on March 23, 2020 would be worth just over $100,000 today versus roughly $29,000 in the S&P 500. Despite the multi-year outperformance, Bitcoin is down about 19% YTD in 2026 and remains highly speculative and volatile; gains in 2024–25 were partly attributed to expectations of crypto deregulation under President Trump. The article cautions investors about significant risk and notes Motley Fool's Stock Advisor did not include Bitcoin in its current top-10 stock picks.

Analysis

NVDA is the asymmetric structural beneficiary of persistent AI capex: continued model training and inference rollouts favor high-memory, high-bandwidth GPUs and create a multi-year replacement cycle that squeezes CPU-first incumbents. Second-order winners include hyperscalers (margin capture on instance pricing), PCIe/memory suppliers, and the used-GPU market—which compresses new-cycle substitution and supports higher pricing power for NVIDIA-branded SKUs. Intel sits on the wrong side of that transition for inferencing-heavy workloads; its roadmap latency and power curves create a secular tailwind for GPU-dominant architectures and for specialized accelerators that can be glued into cloud stacks.

Crypto volatility is a cross-asset forcing function for liquidity and flows: dealers and LPs reprice option surfaces and delta-hedge by selling or buying equities into sharp crypto moves, amplifying tech beta swings over days-to-weeks. Regulatory and political binaries (court rulings, rulemakings, election-driven policy shifts) create concentrated event risk windows where implied volatility resets can be large and persistent; these are the times when put-call skew and financing costs rise materially. Macro tightening or an abrupt liquidity withdrawal would simultaneously compress risk premia across both high-multiple tech names and crypto, so the risk horizon for a large reversal is 1–3 quarters unless a policy pivot restores liquidity.

Actionable alpha is in structural pairs and volatility arbitrage: express conviction in GPU-led winners while funding basis risk via shorts in legacy silicon or through time-limited option structures that monetize elevated skew. Use concentrated option structures to buy convexity into positive AI adoption while selling shorter-dated, event-sensitive premium (crypto/earnings) to finance the carry. Maintain small, liquid hedges into regulatory-event windows rather than large cash reserves—that reduces opportunity cost and captures asymmetric upside if flows re-cycle back into equities.

Key Decisions for Investors

• Pair trade (6–12 months): Long NVDA equity or 9–12 month call spread (buy calls, sell higher strike) sized 3–5% NAV, funded with a 60–40 short in INTC stock (or 9–12 month put position) sized 1.5–2.5% NAV — target 25–40% gross return on the pair; stop-loss if NVDA/INTC relative underperforms by 12% from entry.
• Volatility arb (3 months): Sell short-dated BTC implied vol (futures/options) vs buy longer-dated protection (6–12 month BTC/crypto puts) to capture term structure carry; size max exposure 1–2% NAV and cap downside via put spread to limit leverage-dependent tail risk.
• Growth equity idea (3–9 months): Buy NFLX on pullbacks or purchase 3–9 month call options sized 1–2% NAV—target 30–50% upside on content/monetization reacceleration; hedge with 1–1.5% NAV short in broad tech beta (XLK or a basket) if macro volatility exceeds historical thresholds.
• Event hedge (days–weeks around regulation/election): Reduce directional exposure by 25–40% and buy cheap cross-asset protection (SPX puts or VIX call calendar) sized to cover known binary windows; re-deploy once implieds compress by >30% post-event.
• Risk control: keep total crypto exposure (direct + funded via vol) below 3% NAV and maintain 20–30% of tech positions in liquid option collars to protect against a rapid liquidity shock; reassess after each major regulatory decision or quarterly earnings cycle.