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The cost of an Apple iPhone over the years has only increased. But have iPhone prices over the past decade been higher than BTC or ETH?
The team at CoinGecko studies the price store of BTC and ETH, looking back over a decade and the price of cryptocurrencies cross-referenced with the MSRP iPhone.
iPhone prices have been declining for decades when measured in BTC & ETH
After the release of the iPhone 13 and the announcement of the new iPhone 14, we already know that the standard iPhone 14 models will start at $ 799. The retail price of the iPhone over the past decade – from the iPhone 4S has actually remained a little stable.
The retail price of the 4S is $649.00 and today’s iPhone 14 is $799.00, up about 25% over the past decade, and with no Inflation adjustment. The highest iPhone prices were in 2017 and 2018 with the X and XS, both models costing $999.00. Let’s see how these prices have evolved with bitcoin prices below:
Of the 13 iPhone models released in the last 11 years, only 3 samples had bitcoin-equivalent gains. The same thing exists when compared to Ether, since its inception in 2015. On just three occasions in the last nine iPhone releases, a phone is in ETH or more expensive than the previous model:
Slippage in the market this year:
BTC hit a high of nearly $70K earlier this year before falling again. This resulted in the largest % increase from the previous model to the next model, meaning that the iPhone 13 which cost 0.0178 BTC last year turned into an iPhone 14 that cost twice as much, at 0.0424 BTC. Of course, Bitcoin is the main market driver of cryptocurrencies. But users can also compare it to ETH, which is up from 0.2 ETH last year to 0.5 ETH this year.
A proper investment?
Since the release of the iPhone 4S just over a decade ago, BTC and ETH have seen gains of nearly 500,000% and 250,000%, respectively. Meanwhile, the iPhone only achieved a 23% increase. These are the numbers that are worth our look at in terms of the growth that crypto assets have achieved over the years.
