Anyone looking at a gold chart over the past 55 years doesn't see a straight line up. They see three distinct waves — three clearly delineated bull phases, separated by years of stagnation or decline. Each had a different, clearly identifiable trigger.
That's exactly what makes gold such a valuable teacher for Bitcoin investors. But the real insight only emerges when you lay Bitcoin's own wave history cleanly alongside it: Bitcoin has run through four complete bull waves in just 17 years — and the fifth is starting now.
That's the pace at which Bitcoin is playing what gold needed half a century for.
Gold's Wave 1: 1971-1980 — The Monetary Reset
On August 15, 1971, Richard Nixon interrupted a "Bonanza" episode in millions of American living rooms to announce what sounded like a technical adjustment to monetary policy.
What Nixon actually did: He ended a 27-year-old world monetary order. Bretton Woods was demolished. The dollar no longer backed by gold. Gold could be freely traded for the first time in generations.
The system had cracked because the US had printed too many dollars — Vietnam War, "Great Society" programs, foreign spending. France's Charles de Gaulle regularly demanded gold redemptions, physical, by ship to Paris. Other countries followed. The run was on. Nixon severed the link before the whole game collapsed.
The wave that followed was monumental: from $35 to $850 in nine years. 24× multiple. The final bull year 1979 alone delivered +127%, driven by Iran Revolution and Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
Then came Volcker. The Fed raised rates to nearly 20%. Real returns turned massively positive. Treasury bonds suddenly more attractive than gold. Wave 1 ended abruptly.
What followed: 20 years of bear market. Whoever bought at the 1980 top needed nearly 28 years to get their money back nominally.
Gold's Wave 2: 2003-2011 — The ETF Era
The actual turning point came on November 18, 2004, when the SPDR Gold Shares (GLD) launched on the NYSE. Investors poured more than $1 billion into the fund in its first three trading days — the fastest ETF start in history.
What happened? Gold became a mainstream asset class. Pension funds, insurance companies, RIAs — all the pools that previously couldn't or wouldn't invest in gold suddenly had an easy way.
The result: Gold prices quadrupled in the fund's first seven years. From around $440 (end 2004) to over $1,900 (September 2011). The 2008 financial crisis was the emotional amplifier, but the ETF was the structural trigger.
Wave 2 also had its top. In September 2011, gold stood at $1,920. What followed: 9 years of sideways action — until 2020.
Gold's Wave 3: 2020-? — The Central Bank Wave
Wave 3 began quietly with COVID 2020 and accelerated dramatically in 2024-2025. In 2025 alone, gold gained 65% — the sharpest annual performance since 1979.
But anyone who thought this was again ETF investors as in 2003-2011 was mistaken. Gold ETPs remained largely flat. Instead: Central banks are buying gold at record pace. In the first three quarters of 2025 alone, they added 634 tonnes to their reserves. China, Poland, India, Türkiye lead the list.
What's driving this wave? Not inflation. Not ETFs. De-dollarization. The trigger was 2022, when the US and Europe froze Russia's foreign exchange reserves. For every non-Western central bank, the moment of realization: USD reserves are political risk.
| Wave | Period | Trigger | Multiple | Endpoint Mechanism |
|------|------------|--------------------------------------|-------------|---------------------------|
| 1 | 1971-1980 | Bretton Woods collapse | ~24× | Volcker rate shock |
| 2 | 2003-2011 | ETF democratization + financial crisis| ~5× | Fed tapering 2013 |
| 3 | 2020-? | Central bank reserve diversification | ~3× (ongoing)| open |
Three waves over 55 years. Three different triggers. The same asset.
Bitcoin: Four Waves in 17 Years
Now let's look at Bitcoin's own bull history — and we'll be surprised. Bitcoin doesn't need 55 years for three waves. Bitcoin has had four clearly identifiable waves in 17 years, each with its own trigger, top, and subsequent bear market:
| Wave | Period | Trigger | Top | Bear-DD | Investor Class |
|------|------------|----------------------------------|------------------|---------|---------------------------|
| 1 | 2010-2013 | Genesis, Mt. Gox era | $1,127 (Nov 13) | -87% | Crypto-Native, Cypherpunks|
| 2 | 2015-2017 | Retail mania, ICO hype | $19,665 (Dec 17) | -84% | Retail (crypto mainstream)|
| 3 | 2018-2021 | Macro/Institutional, COVID QE | $69,044 (Nov 21) | -77% | Hedge Funds, Corporates |
| 4 | 2022-2025 | Spot ETF approval | $126,198 (Oct 25)| -38% (ongoing)| Wealth Manager, RIAs|
Three things stand out:
First: Each wave had a different lead actor. Wave 1 was Bitcoin pioneers and cypherpunks who could mine themselves or hold Bitcoin physically. Wave 2 was retail-driven — mainstream attention, ICO mania, "your neighbor starts investing in crypto". Wave 3 brought genuine institutional involvement for the first time — MicroStrategy, Tesla, Square as corporate buyers, hedge funds as traders. Wave 4 finally opened Bitcoin to regulated wealth managers and RIAs through the spot ETF.
Second: Drawdowns are getting flatter. -87%, -84%, -77%, -38% (so far). With each cycle, Bitcoin matures further. What was an 87% crash in 2014 is a 38% drawdown in 2025.
Third: Multiples are getting smaller. Wave 1 went from $1 to $1,127. Wave 4 from $42,000 to $126,198. The exponential phase isn't mathematically infinitely repeatable. With each cycle, the upside gets smaller, but the market cap gets larger.
That's the natural maturation curve of an asset class. Gold went through it over 55 years — Bitcoin in 17.
The Parallels, Cleanly Compared
Now the comparison table gets really interesting. Bitcoin doesn't play the gold script 1:1, but it plays similar roles at a different tempo:
| Driver | Gold | Bitcoin |
|-------------------------------|-------------------------------|----------------------------------|
| Initial phase / pioneers | 1971-1980 (Wave 1) | 2010-2013 (Wave 1) |
| Retail awareness / mainstream | (skipped, gold was old) | 2015-2017 (Wave 2) |
| Institutional entry | (gradual process in 80s) | 2018-2021 (Wave 3) |
| Mainstream access via ETF | 2003-2011 (Wave 2) | 2022-2025 (Wave 4) |
| Central banks | 2020-? (Wave 3) | El Salvador 2021, coming? |
| Yield vehicle (Fixed Income) | never | 2025-? (Wave 5, new) |
Two things stand out: First, Bitcoin has a "retail wave" (2015-2017) that gold never had — gold was already 5,000 years old in 1971 and didn't need retail education. Second — and this is the most important point of this entire article — Bitcoin now stands before a wave that gold never had.
Wave 5: Something Without Precedent
While we write this, Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy) is building a mechanism that does something that was structurally impossible for gold: It's converting Bitcoin into a fixed-income product that directly attacks the bond market.
The instrument is called STRC — Variable Rate Series A Perpetual Preferred Stock. Current yield: 11.5%, monthly payouts, Nasdaq-listed, daily liquid. In a world where a 10-year Treasury yields about 4%, that's a different league.
In the very week we finalize this article, Strategy bought 13,927 BTC for roughly $1 billion — without issuing a single new common share. The entire capital came from STRC issuance. The largest corporate Bitcoin holder in the world is not a forced seller in the bear market. It's an accelerated buyer.
Why does this change everything? Because it opens up a fifth investor class for Bitcoin — one that couldn't be addressed at all in the previous four waves:
| Wave | Investor Class | Access via |
|------|-------------------------------|----------------------------------------------|
| 1 | Crypto-Native, Cypherpunks | Mining, Mt. Gox, Self-Custody |
| 2 | Retail (Mainstream) | Coinbase, Binance, Crypto Apps |
| 3 | Hedge Funds, Corporates | OTC desks, Treasury purchases |
| 4 | Wealth Manager, RIAs | Spot ETFs (IBIT, FBTC) |
| 5 | **Fixed-Income Investors** | **Yield products with BTC as collateral** |
Wave 5 targets a market that makes even the ETF wave look small: The global fixed-income market is roughly $143 trillion. A substantial portion sits in retail and HNW portfolios that have been starved of yield for fifteen years.
These investors aren't buying Bitcoin. They're buying yield. But if the yield comes from Bitcoin-backed collateral, they're buying Bitcoin through the back door. And they keep buying in a bear market, because they're chasing the spread vs. Treasuries, not the Bitcoin price.
We've analyzed STRC's mechanics and risks — including the Coffeezilla debate — in a dedicated article: The STRC Machine — How Saylor Turned the Bear Market Into a Bitcoin Accumulation Engine.
The decisive point for our wave thesis: If STRC works and gets copied, Bitcoin has something gold never had and Bitcoin itself didn't have in its four previous waves — a structurally counter-cyclical buyer base. Yield-hungry investors don't care about the BTC price. They care about the spread to Treasuries.
What the Wave Story Really Teaches Us
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Bitcoin matures faster than most think. Four complete waves in 17 years — gold needed 55 years for three. Anyone who still describes Bitcoin as a "young asset" may have underestimated the asset class's maturity. Bitcoin is young in the calendar sense, but experienced in the cycle-experience sense.
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Drawdowns flatten — multiples get smaller. With each cycle, Bitcoin converges toward "normal" risk-asset behavior. That's good for institutional adoption (lower volatility → higher allocations possible) and bad for speculators (no more 100× trades from the bottom).
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Wave 5 has no historical template. Gold never had a mass-market yield product with the asset as collateral. Bitcoin does now. That's not a repetition, that's a new script being written while we read it.
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The pauses between waves are brutal. Whoever bought gold at the 1980 top waited 28 years. Bitcoin pauses are shorter — typically 1-2 years bear market — but no less painful. -87%, -84%, -77%. That gets forgotten quickly in a bull market.
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The ETF wave and the yield wave overlap. With gold, Wave 2 (ETF) was complete before Wave 3 (central banks) began. With Bitcoin, Wave 4 (ETF) is still in full swing while Wave 5 (yield) is already starting. That's the structural acceleration you often hear about but rarely see proven concretely. Here you see it.
What You Do With This
We build Backtesting Arena because we believe the right question is rarely "Where's the price going?" The right question is usually: Which wave are we in — and which strategy fits which phase?
The historical Bitcoin waves are fully backtestable in our database, and they give us concrete hints:
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Trend-following strategies (Bull Market Traffic Light, EMA Trend Bias, Golden Cross) worked excellently in Waves 1-3. In Wave 4 with its flatter drawdown and quick V-shaped rebounds, it got harder.
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Mean-reversion strategies (RSI-based) had advantages in Wave 4 because the more volatile, shorter swings provided more trade opportunities.
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If Wave 5 really brings counter-cyclical buyers, these patterns will change again. Tops could flatten because yield-hungry capital no longer "panic-sells at $69k" but keeps buying. Cycle top indicators that worked in Waves 1-3 might signal too early in Wave 5.
In the Arena you can test exactly this hypothesis. The EMA Trend Bias strategy, the WMA filter logic, the Bull Market Traffic Light — none of them are built for a specific prediction. They're built to recognize regimes. Wave-3 bull phase, Wave-4 transition, brutal bear market between waves.
Today, April 28, 2026, one Bitcoin trades around $77,700. Wave 4 may have seen its top, may not have. Wave 5 has just passed its first bear-market test.
What we can say with certainty: Gold wrote the script three times. Bitcoin has played it four times in a third of the time. And is now writing a fifth act that was never on gold's stage.
The stage today is suspiciously well-lit. Wave 5 has just passed its first real test.
Disclaimer: This article is not investment advice. Past performance — whether of gold, Bitcoin, or a backtest strategy — is no reliable indicator of future results. Bitcoin is a highly volatile asset that can cause significant losses at any time. Do your own research. Invest only what you can afford to lose.