Tesla stock vs Bitcoin: which had greater returns?

How is the Tesla stock performing on the market compared to bitcoin (BTC)?

Tesla Inc (TSLA) stocks, i.e. the shares on the stock exchange of Elon Musk’s company, have been listed on the Nasdaq since mid-2010, whereas bitcoin was trading on crypto exchanges only a few months earlier. 

A comparison between Tesla Stock and Bitcoin in terms of returns

Over the years, 1 BTC has gone from being worth less than $1 to nearly $20,000 in December 2017, while now its price is around $9,500. 

Tesla stocks, on the other hand, began with a price close to $20, before reaching an all-time high shortly after mid-February 2020 at over $900. 

In particular, until about mid-2013 the price of Tesla shares had moved very little, while the price of bitcoin had already grown a lot. Therefore, the comparison for this period is too out of balance in favour of bitcoin to be really interesting. 

The price of the Tesla stock started to rise after March 2013, with a first climb that took it from $34 to $158 in five months. In this short period, it gained more than 350%, and the rise continued, albeit at a slower pace, for another 12 months until it reached $235 in September 2014. 

In total, from March 2013 to September 2014, the Tesla share price rose by almost 600%. 

In the same period, the price of bitcoin first rose from $14 in February 2013 to $1,100 in December of the same year and then fell back under about $350 in November 2014.  

In other words, BTC first recorded an incredible +7,700% in about ten months and then fell back to +2,400% in 21 months. 

In January 2015 the price of bitcoin dropped again, to $216, and remained below $300 until October 2015. In the meantime, the price of Tesla shares remained almost constant and remained below $250 until April 2017. 

Bitcoin, however, by April 2017 had already risen above $1,000, and during this period had increased more than 300%. 

In June 2017 the price of Tesla shares increased to about $330, and there it remained, with ups and downs, until December 2019. 

In the same period, however, there was the first major speculative bubble on the price of bitcoin, lasting about a year, which brought the price up to an all-time high of about $20,000 in December 2017. 

In December 2019 the price of bitcoin had fallen to about $7,000, with a gain of 600% more or less in the same period in which Tesla shares recorded a +40%. 

From December 2019 the price of Tesla shares rose from about $320 to over $900 in mid-February 2020 and then fell back to $813 after the collapse in mid-March and the subsequent rise: first, it recorded a +180% and then a -9%, up to now. 

In the same period the price of bitcoin rose first to a peak of about $10,000, also in mid-February, and then collapsed in mid-March, to then recover to the current price of about $9,500, so first it recorded a +42%, and then a -10%, up to now. 

This means that from December until today, including the mid-February peaks and the mid-March 2020 collapse, with subsequent recovery, the Tesla share price performed better than the bitcoin price. 

However, analyzing the performance of previous years, bitcoin has performed much more over time. 

In particular, the comparison shows that, in the long run, the volatility of bitcoin is enormously higher than that of Tesla shares, while in the short term Tesla shares sometimes perform better than bitcoin. 

For example, in 2019 the Tesla stock has gained about 28%, while bitcoin 89%, but during 2020 the Tesla stock has now returned about 100%, with bitcoin stopped at 35%. Looking back in time, however, the performance of the price of bitcoin, in the long run, has been greatly superior to that of Tesla stock.