On October 27, 2022, Elon Musk completed his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter. He walked into the building carrying a sink, tweeted "let that sink in," and became the owner of one of the most consequential, and expensive, platforms in media history.
Twitter, now rebranded as X, has had a turbulent run since. Fidelity marked its value down by as much as 79 percent at one point.
It has since recovered, with the platform broadly valued back around $44 billion following improved financials and returning advertisers. In other words, after two and a half years, Musk is roughly where he started.
So here is the question: what if he had split that $44 billion between Bitcoin and gold instead?
At $22 billion allocated to Bitcoin on the day the Twitter deal closed, Musk could have bought approximately 1.1 million BTC at the prevailing price of roughly $20,000 per coin. Bitcoin was deep in a bear market at the time, the FTX collapse was days away and sentiment could not have been worse.
Related: If you invested $1,000 in Bitcoin when Satoshi created it, here's what you'd have today
Today, with Bitcoin trading at approximately $64,000, those 1.1 million coins would be worth around $70.4 billion. That is a return of 220 percent on half the original investment.
Gold was trading at approximately $1,660 per ounce in late October 2022. The remaining $22 billion would have purchased roughly 13.25 million ounces.
At today's gold price of approximately $3,300 per ounce, the metal has quietly doubled, that position is worth around $43.7 billion.
Bitcoin at $70.4 billion plus gold at $43.7 billion gives a combined total of approximately $114.1 billion, more than two and a half times the original $44 billion outlay.
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Against an X valuation that has clawed back to where it started after years of advertiser exodus, layoffs, and controversy, the comparison is uncomfortable.
X is not just an investment for Musk. It is a communications platform, a political tool, and a long-term play on becoming a super-app.
The $44 billion bought him something no amount of Bitcoin or gold could, reach, influence, and a direct line to 600 million users.
The numbers favour the alternative. The strategy was never purely about the numbers.
Related: If you invested just $100 a month in Bitcoin since 2015, here's what it's worth today
This story was originally published by TheStreet on Jul 18, 2026, where it first appeared in the MARKETS section. Add TheStreet as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
Source: Yahoo Finance Top News — This article was automatically imported from the source. Read full article at original source →
