A Decade Deep: The Cost of an iPhone Over the Years, Measured in BTC and ETH

The cost of an Apple iPhone has only increased over the years. But has the price of the iPhone been higher than the price of BTC or ETH in the past decade? Not even close to, according to a new report from the folks at CoinGecko. CoinGecko’s research team dug deep into the price archives for BTC and ETH, looking back over a decade, referencing crypto prices to iPhone suggested prices.

Let’s take a look at the CoinGecko report and key insights.

iPhone prices fall as the decades progress… Measured in BTC and ETH

On the heels of the iPhone 13 release and the announcement of the new iPhone 14, we learned that the standard iPhone 14 models start at $799 and their pre-order window has just opened. An important perspective from CoinGecko’s insights is that the selling price of an iPhone over the past decade – from the iPhone 4S where CoinGecko’s research window begins – has actually remained somewhat stable.

The retail price of the 4S was $649.00, and with today’s 14 at $799.00, that’s an increase of about 25% over the past decade, excluding inflation. Peak iPhone prices can be seen in 2017 and 2018 with the X and XS respectively, with both models costing $999.00. See below how these prices have evolved with the price of Bitcoin:

In 13 models released in the past 11 years, only 3 models saw their Bitcoin equivalent increase from the following year. Similar sentiments also exist when comparing the price to Ether, as it was created in 2015. In only three cases in the last nine iPhone releases, a phone was more expensive in ETH than the previous model:

Callouts from the CoinGecko report

There are a few additional important disclosures from the CoinGecko report:

The price drop in the market this year: BTC saw highs of nearly $70K earlier this year before returning to Earth. This led to the largest percentage increase from one model to another, turning 13 models priced at 0.0178 BTC into 14 models priced over 2x that last year, at 0.0424 BTC. Bitcoin is of course also the main market mover for altcoins, so a similar sentiment can be expressed with ETH, which saw a respective rise from 0.2 ETH last year to 0.5 ETH this year.
A responsible investment? Relatively: Since the release of the iPhone 4S a little over a decade ago, BTC and ETH have posted nearly 500,000% and 250,000% percent gains, respectively. Compare that to iPhones with a 23% increase. This should be taken with a grain of salt – it’s almost apples and oranges – but it’s worth considering as we consider the growth and respect crypto assets have earned over the years.

Bitcoin (BTC) has seen all sorts of valuation relative to Apple's flagship phone. | Source: BTC-USD on TradingView.com