Preserving Purchasing Power over 100 Years: Gold, Stocks, Bitcoin

What has preserved purchasing power over 100 years? Cash has not: $100 from 1913 buys today what $3 bought then, CHF 100 from 1914 what about CHF 9 bought, and the German mark was wiped out twice. Gold has held its purchasing power and added a little, about 1.5% a year in real terms. Stocks have multiplied it over 125 years, worldwide by a good 5% a year in real terms. Bitcoin achieved more in 16 years than anything else, but 16 years are not 100.

Anyone saving today thinks in years, perhaps decades. But anyone building wealth for children and grandchildren is planning across a century. This article asks: what became of 100 units of money that someone put aside around 1913, as cash, in gold, in stocks? And what can be said about bitcoin, which has only existed since 2009? How inflation eats into your savings today and how much the euro and franc have lost since 2000 is shown in Inflation and Loss of Purchasing Power. This one takes the very long view.

Why 1913 is a good starting point

On December 23, 1913, US President Woodrow Wilson signed the Federal Reserve Act. It created the US central bank that still steers the dollar today. Back then the dollar was firmly tied to gold: one fine ounce cost $20.67. In Europe the same was true of the mark and the franc. A year later the First World War began, and with it the century in which states cut their currencies loose from gold.

So the starting point is fair: all three currencies were as "hard" then as they would never be again. Everything that followed is the story of money that a state can create more of.

What 100 units of cash lost

The US dollar: 97% gone

The US consumer price index (CPI) stood at 10.0 in December 1913. In October 2026 it stood at 337.5. Prices have risen almost 34-fold.

Per year it sounds harmless: 3.2% inflation on average. But over 113 years, exactly this compounding eats up almost everything.

The Swiss franc: the best of a bad bunch

The franc is regarded as one of the most stable currencies in the world, and rightly so. Even so: the Swiss consumer price index has risen roughly elevenfold since June 1914. CHF 100 from 1914 buys today what about CHF 9 bought then. That is a loss of about 90%, a good 2% inflation a year on average.

So the franc lost more slowly than the dollar, but it did lose. Even the most stable paper currency of the century gave up nine tenths of its purchasing power.

The mark: down to zero twice

In Germany the calculation is shorter. The mark of 1914 did not survive ten years.

1923: The state financed the war and its aftermath with the printing press. In November 1923 one dollar cost 4.2 trillion marks; in 1914 it had cost 4.20 marks. With the Rentenmark the rule was: 1 Rentenmark = 1 trillion paper marks. Anyone who had 100 marks in a savings account in 1914 owned, on paper, one ten-billionth of a Rentenmark afterwards. How it came to this and what Weimar, Zimbabwe and Venezuela have in common is told in The History of Hyperinflation.

1948: The Reichsmark that followed in 1924 lasted only until the next war. The state again financed rearmament and war with debt and money. Because prices and wages were frozen, inflation did not show; it built up underneath. After the war people preferred trading cigarettes to Reichsmarks. On June 20, 1948 the Deutsche Mark arrived in the western zones. Every resident received 40 D-marks per head. Wages, rents and prices were converted 1 : 1. Savings, on the other hand, were first converted 10 : 1 and cut further the same year: 100 Reichsmarks in a savings account ended up as 6.50 D-marks.

Austria went through the same pattern: the krone went under in the hyperinflation of 1922, and in 1925 the schilling replaced it at 10’000 kronen to 1 schilling.

After 1948 things went better in Germany. The D-mark was considered a hard currency, and since 2002 people have paid in euros (€1 = DM 1.95583). But the euro and the D-mark also lost purchasing power every year, just more slowly.

Gold: purchasing power preserved, with long dry spells

In 1913 an ounce of gold cost $20.67. On Nov 12, 2026 it cost about $3’885. In nominal terms that is 188 times as much. Because prices rose 34-fold over the same period, the real factor is a good 5.5. So gold buys a good five and a half times as much today as in 1913, about 1.5% a year above inflation.

That sounds like a calm, reliable store of value. The road there was not:

• 1913 to 1971: The gold price was fixed by the state. In 1933 the US government banned its citizens from privately owning gold coins and bars, and in 1934 it raised the price from $20.67 to $35. It stayed at $35 until 1971 while prices kept rising. Gold lost purchasing power in real terms during this period.
• 1971 to 1980: After the end of the gold link, gold rose to $850 by January 1980. In real terms an ounce then bought a good five times as much as in 1913, almost as much as today.
• 1980 to 2001: Two decades of decline followed. In 2001 gold cost about $271 on average. In real terms that was about a quarter less than in 1913. Anyone who bought gold in 1913 and sold it in 2001 had lost purchasing power after 88 years.
• 2001 to today: Only the second big rise brought gold to today's level.

Gold is thus the classic preserver of purchasing power, but not a multiplier: over a century it narrowly beat inflation. Anyone who bought at the wrong moment waited decades. How gold moved after 1971 and what that might mean for bitcoin is shown in Bitcoin vs. Gold: A Historical Model Comparison.

Stocks: the best multipliers, with gaps

The most comprehensive data on long-run returns come from Elroy Dimson, Paul Marsh and Mike Staunton (London Business School), who publish them every year in the UBS Global Investment Returns Yearbook. In the 2025 edition, covering 1900 to 2024:

• World equities: about 5.2% a year in real terms
• US equities: about 6.6% a year in real terms
• World bonds: about 1.7% a year in real terms
• Short-term deposits (savings accounts, money market): about 0.5% a year in real terms

The US economist Jeremy Siegel, in Stocks for the Long Run, arrives at a similar order of magnitude for US stocks since 1802: a good 6% a year in real terms.

Over 125 years compounding turns this into a huge number. At 5.2% real a year, purchasing power doubles roughly every 14 years.

Before you treat this as safe, three caveats:

1. Before costs and taxes. The figures assume every dividend was reinvested immediately and at no cost. Fees and taxes over 125 years take a noticeable bite out of them.
2. The US is the winner. Anyone betting on one country in 1900 did not know which it would be. In Russia after 1917 and in China after 1949 shareholders lost everything. In Germany, too, stocks lost a large part of their value in both world wars and their aftermath, and over the century they lag well behind the world average.
3. Long dry spells. Stocks also had decades without real gains. Anyone who bought US stocks in 1929 or 1966 needed many years to get their purchasing power back. Since 2000, world equities have returned only about 3.5% a year in real terms.

Even so: over the last century, broadly diversified stocks have created more purchasing power than any other major asset class with such a long history.

Bitcoin: 16 years, not 100

Bitcoin has existed since January 2009. The first exchange price in the site's daily data is from July 18, 2010: $0.086. On November 7, 2026 bitcoin closed at $75’868. Taking out US inflation leaves a factor of about 570’000. That is a good 125% a year in real terms, purchasing power doubling roughly every ten months.

No other asset in this article comes close. But you need to know three things about it.

The start was almost zero

Bitcoin began at a value of practically nothing. Any asset that grows from almost zero to a trillion dollars in market value has absurd returns at the start. That does not repeat. The bigger bitcoin gets, the more money each further doubling needs.

The entry point decides

Anyone who bought not in 2010 but at one of the big peaks sees a very different picture:

Prices: daily closes from the site's data, adjusted for US CPI.

The swings are brutal

In 16 years bitcoin fell by more than 70% in real terms five times, in 2011 even by 93%. Anyone holding for one year was down in real terms in 28% of all cases. Over four years every purchase day so far ended up in real profit, in the worst case (bought April 8, 2021) by 9%. Over five years, however, there were losses: anyone who bought on December 16, 2017 had 30% less in real terms five years later.

How deep the crashes were and how long they lasted is shown by the comparison of all bear markets:

What 16 years do not prove

16 years are a short time. After 1980 gold fell for about 20 years before it found its low. Stocks had periods of 15 years and more without real gains. Bitcoin has not yet outlasted a single generation, no world war and no currency reform. The rules speak for bitcoin: the supply is capped at 21 million, and no state can create new coins, as happened with the mark in 1923 and 1948. But that bitcoin will still preserve purchasing power in 100 years is a reasoned expectation, not a measured fact. What separates bitcoin and gold as stores of value today is compared in Bitcoin vs. Gold.

The comparison at a glance

Cash and gold: own calculation with US CPI and the Swiss CPI. Stocks: Dimson, Marsh, Staunton, UBS Global Investment Returns Yearbook 2025, with dividends, before costs and taxes. Bitcoin: the site's daily data, adjusted for US CPI. The periods differ in length and are therefore not directly comparable.

An honest verdict

Money that a state can create more of loses almost everything over a century. That is not an accident, it is the pattern. Even the franc lost nine tenths. Over a century, cash is not a store of value, only a means of payment.

Gold preserved purchasing power but barely multiplied it. It survived two world wars and the end of the mark. In return you accepted decades in which it was worth less in real terms than when you bought it.

Broadly diversified stocks multiplied purchasing power the most, as long as the market kept existing. Anyone who picked a single country could lose everything.

Bitcoin created more purchasing power in 16 years than anything else, with crashes that go beyond those of gold and stocks. Whether it comes through the next 84 years just as well, nobody knows. Its fixed supply is exactly the property the dollar, franc and mark lacked. That makes it a serious candidate, not a certainty.

For you this means: anyone planning over decades needs real assets whose supply nobody can increase at will. Which ones and in what mix depends on your goal and your nerves. If you add bitcoin, you should be able to hold it long enough that a 70% crash does not force you to sell.