BIT Backtest: Trend-Following Beats Buy-and-Hold for Bitcoin, S&P 500 Favors Holding

The split verdict is the real story: trend-following earns its keep in bitcoin's volatility while conceding ground in equities, which argues against treating any single systematic approach as universally superior. The five-year gap is the more striking figure, but it also coincides with a specific market regime, so whether that edge persists across different conditions remains the open question. The named reversal risks — AI financing pressure, cyberattack exposure and macro uncertainty — are the variables worth tracking, since they sit outside the price series the model is built on.