Which should an investor saving for retirement own right now: Bitcoin (CRYPTO:BTC) or the State Street SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (NYSEARCA:SPY)? Bitcoin is known for making wealth, but the matched five-year numbers favor the plain index fund by a wide margin.

Bitcoin trades at $64,868, which is 48.55% below its all-time high of $126,080, set on October 6, 2025. Year to date, Bitcoin is down 25.93%, while SPY is up 10.62%.

Five-Year Track Record: SPY Opens a Massive Lead

Bitcoin closed at $60,398.83 on November 16, 2021. Five years later it is only 7.4% higher. Over nearly the same window, SPY rose from $467.27 on November 12, 2021 to $754.37 on November 13, 2026, a price gain of 61.44%.

In dollar terms, $10,000 put into Bitcoin would be worth roughly $10,740 today. The same amount in SPY would be worth about $16,144 on price alone. Over ten years, SPY’s price gain comes to 245.6%. Winner: SPY.

Income: SPY Pays You to Hold It

Bitcoin pays no dividends, so its return depends entirely on what the next buyer will pay. SPY passes along dividends from its underlying companies. With those dividends reinvested, SPY’s five-year total return was about 72.6%, which would have grown $10,000 to roughly $17,260. The fund charges an expense ratio of 0.0945%. For retirees who draw income from their portfolios, a cash payout makes a real difference. Winner: SPY.

Volatility and Drawdowns: Bitcoin’s Swings Can Wreck a Retirement Plan

One comparison service puts Bitcoin’s five-year volatility at about 55.1%, compared with 16.3% for the S&P 500. The same source estimates Bitcoin’s largest drawdown over that period at 74.2%, while the S&P 500’s was 24.8%. A loss on Bitcoin’s scale takes years to recover from, and a retiree selling assets to cover living costs may never get those years (that early-withdrawal damage is exactly what planners call sequence-of-returns risk, and we walked through how to protect against it in a free guide here).

Bitcoin lost 20.43% over 30 days and now trades below its 20-day, 50-day and 200-day moving averages. Over roughly the same month, SPY slipped just 1.98%. The VIX, Wall Street’s fear gauge, stands at 18.70[1], inside its normal range. SPY also spreads its risk across about 500 major U.S. companies. Its largest holding, NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA | NVDA Price Prediction), makes up only 7.58% of assets. Winner: SPY.

Bitcoin Still Wins Some Periods

Anyone who bought Bitcoin at $36,163.47 on November 16, 2023 is up 79.37%, thanks to the 2023 to 2024 recovery. Some institutional voices still prefer Bitcoin within crypto. Speaking on the Unchained podcast, Bitwise’s chief investment officer said “Bitcoin is a more steady position” for institutional capital. Bitcoin can still deliver sharp rallies, but how much an investor makes depends heavily on when they buy. Someone who bought near the late-2021 high has close to nothing to show for five years, while SPY rewarded buyers at nearly any entry point over the same period.

Verdict: Five-Year Data Strongly Favors SPY for Retirement Investors

SPY wins on all three measures: long-term returns, income, and risk. For a retirement investor, the data points to SPY as the steadier option. It delivered a 72.6% five-year total return, pays a dividend, and has had far smaller drawdowns. Bitcoin’s upside appeals only to investors who can afford to lose a large share of what they put in and who don’t need the money for a decade. Even for them, Bitcoin’s five-year record trails SPY’s on both return and risk. Over the past five years, the index fund earned far more with much less risk.

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After two decades of patrolling the dark corners of suburbia as a police officer, Rich Duprey hung up his badge and gun to begin writing full time about stocks and investing. For the past 20 years, he’s been cruising the markets looking for companies to lock up as long-term holdings in a portfolio while writing extensively on the broad sectors of consumer goods, technology, and industrials. Because his experience isn’t from the typical financial analyst track, Rich is able to break down complex topics into understandable and useful action points for the average investor. His writings have appeared on The Motley Fool, InvestorPlace, Yahoo! Finance, Money Morning, and, of course, 24/7 Wall St. He has been featured in both U.S. and international publications, including MarketWatch, Financial Times, Forbes, Fast Company, and USA Today.