U.S. stocks have been enjoying a strong run this year—over the past several years, really—but it’s nothing like the gains that have been seen in digital currencies. The moves in the latter have been so dramatic that it seems reasonable to ask: what will come first, Dow 30,000 or bitcoin at $30,000?
What will happen first?
Ryan Vlastelica (@RyanVlastelica) September 1, 2017
Those targets would represent vastly different growth stories. The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, +0.39% is currently trading around 22,000, meaning it would need to rise about 36.5% to hit that milestone. Bitcoin BTCUSD, +1.81% meanwhile, is at about $4,890, making for a considerably steeper mountain to scale. It would need to advance more than 500%, or rise by a factor of six.
Is that an insurmountable hurdle? With bitcoin it can be hard to tell. The world’s largest cryptocurrency has been on a blinding rally lately: over the past 12 months it has soared more than 700%—a repeat of that over the next 12 would be enough to cross the finish line. In 2017 so far it has gained more than 400%, and it nearly doubled in the month of August alone. Those sharp gains, however, have come with some equally sharp pullbacks, and because bitcoin lacks the traditional valuation metrics of stocks, a target of $300 is arguably just as plausible as $30,000.
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Such gains are rare in any kind of investment vehicle, and charges that bitcoin is in a bubble have dogged the $80.6 billion digital currency for ages. Aaron Lasher, co-founder of Breadwallet, recently said that “this bull market will likely be followed by a pretty brutal bear market,” though he added that the currency’s market cap could reach $5 trillion over the next 10 years. That is trillion with a T—meaning it would boast a market capitalization bigger than any company in history, ever, one several times the current size of Apple Inc. AAPL, -0.01%
The total combined market cap of all digital currencies is currently $176.5 billion, according to CoinMarketCap, a pricing website.
Read: Here’s how bitcoin is dwarfing housing and dot-com bubbles
On the stocks side, the Dow has gained 11.3% thus far this year, a solid pace, and like bitcoin it has hit its own notable milestones, having first topped 20,000 in January. While the gap the blue-chip average to close to hit 30,000 is smaller, its outlook is no less uncertain.
Read: What Dow 20,000 means for stock-market investors
Like bitcoin, the Dow’s gains have been accompanied by concerns that prices have gotten too elevated. The U.S. market is the world’s most expensive, by one calculation, and few expect that the coming years will see Wall Street deliver the kind of returns it did in the wake of the financial crisis recovery.
That said, the Dow’s 30 components mean it is a comparably more diversified average than bitcoin, which could protect it from downside, and it has historically done better than the stock market overall, as measured against the S&P 500 SPX, +0.34%
Bitcoin and stocks have little correlation to each other, but weakness in one could arguably lead to adoption of the other, if growth-seeking investors find their potential gains worth the potential risk.
That doesn’t answer the overall question though, of which will see 30,000 first. Place your votes, and we’ll see where sentiment is pointing.