In 1979 the price range of gold was $226 to $512 per troy ounce, a slightly higher level of volatility than the Bitcoin level you describe with a bit of exaggeration as "far riskier than virtually all…commodities." The gold price today is $1485 per troy ounce.
I'd like to caution the people who have downvoted your other comment that there is a plausible reading that is sufficiently charitable to make your new comment not actually false. Namely, although if you measure it in dollars, it's "worth" 3 to 6 times more, even over the timespan you cherry-picked, the dollar has lost more than a factor of 6 since 1979, so gold really is worth less today than it was then. The attraction of gold — just as with Bitcoin — is precisely that it doesn't have a secular decline in value built in, so it's a good vehicle for preserving wealth through periods of instability, even though it doesn't generate a return in the way that stocks and bonds do.
In 1979 the price range of gold was $226 to $512 per troy ounce, a slightly higher level of volatility than the Bitcoin level you describe with a bit of exaggeration as "far riskier than virtually all…commodities." The gold price today is $1485 per troy ounce.
I'd like to caution the people who have downvoted your other comment that there is a plausible reading that is sufficiently charitable to make your new comment not actually false. Namely, although if you measure it in dollars, it's "worth" 3 to 6 times more, even over the timespan you cherry-picked, the dollar has lost more than a factor of 6 since 1979, so gold really is worth less today than it was then. The attraction of gold — just as with Bitcoin — is precisely that it doesn't have a secular decline in value built in, so it's a good vehicle for preserving wealth through periods of instability, even though it doesn't generate a return in the way that stocks and bonds do.