No I don't think gold would be up 1,000% if Bitcoin didn't exist.

Bitcoin is a more of a speculative investment than a store of value at this stage, because it has been producing such extraordinary returns (whereas gold is the opposite, on average far more of a store of value than a speculative investment (with some rare bursts of euphoria)). Bitcoin still isn't very widely/greatly (immense sums) held by the rich or the elite institutions, they're only beginning to dip their toes into it. Will Bitcoin end up primarily as a store of value over time (and less of a speculative frenzy)? Sure, that appears to be the likelihood at this point.

Gold moves, across time, in line with the destruction of the US Dollar (it'll see occasional temporary bursts due to fear / panic / commodity bubbles etc). Gold is overwhelmingly priced in dollars. Most commodities are. If gold would be up 1,000% as representative of enormous inflation / destruction in the USD, we'd be seeing that in an epic commodity bubble of the sort we saw in the 2000s. You'd see it in everything from copper to oil to silver. While those commodities are clearly seeing some inflationary push-up from the dollar losing value (and bets on future dollar destruction), it's not remotely close to a 1,000% gold move type debasement.

Low interest rates over a very long period of time, is indeed inflating assets, exactly as it helped cause the 2003-2007 real-estate bubble previously. I wasn't disputing any of that in what I said. Those low interest rates are causing housing values to rest far beyond where they otherwise would be (people buying more house than they otherwise could, due to artificially low mortgage rates). Those low interest rates are driving speculative money into most asset classes, from art & collectible cards to stocks and real-estate and most everything inbetween. It took a while but the high asset prices became a bubble which then became a mania, which will then either crash or otherwise be forced to stagnate across a very long period of time (think: Nasdaq from 2000 to 2015). This market doesn't have to crash, it may just decline or swing in tantrums, while inflation erodes its value and brings the valuations back in line with the mediocre US (and global) growth rates. The China boom phase is well over and there is no next China-like outcome coming soon, so global growth will largely disappoint this decade. This current market is a rather extreme case of future returns - distant future returns - being pulled forward. How many decades will it take for Tesla or Snowflake or Shopify to grow into their valuations? Tesla needs to become as profitable as 2 to 4 Toyotas to justify its present valuation, that should only take about 40 years of perfect execution and world conquering dominance. When you pull returns forward from so far into the future, the penalty you pay is stagnation as you eventually pass through that future time. And if this market does crash spectacularly, they'll pump and pump and pump and reinflate the valuations again at some point, most likely, even if it takes the better part of a decade to do it (which isn't to say those valuations will reach present mania levels again, maybe that doesn't happen but once every several decades; but to get back to abnormally elevated valuations, they can certainly drive us back to that after a crash with QE and low interest rates plus 5-10 years).

My strategy is to pay as far below what I consider to be fair value as I can for high quality assets. It ends up being taking advantage of the fact that very few investors are capable of objectivity, capable of controlling themselves, capable of controlling their greed or emotions. Markets always go too high and sell down too low; you sell into the froth and buy the panic (Buffett's mantra of being greedy when others are fearful, and fearful when others are greedy, it is that simple; then repeat it with discipline across a lifetime). The disciplined win over time. I generated enormous returns from both the run up to the present, and the March quick crash. You don't need to do that very often to make a lot of money over time, as returns compound, you only need a few giant hits rarely; as such you can afford to be very strategic and very patient about it; this is one of the points that amateur investors most often fail to learn, they think you must always have your money at work, you must always be doing something, it's entirely wrong. Understanding there are many times when you should do nothing, when you should be patient, is very important. There are critical times to act, where you can strike and generate the extreme bulk of max potential returns, and that doesn't happen constantly (although people think it does during mania phases, a lot of those people will ride the mania back down the other direction though; see: Dave Portnoy as a microcosm of a typical bubble amateur routinely losing playing with a mania he doesn't understand). One of the most important rules is to first do no harm, first don't lose money, and if you can do that compounding returns will generate an extraordinary outcome over time. The people that ride this mania back down (which will be most investors), may see their progress reset by a decade (or worse), as happened with the dotcom bubble crash or real-estate bubble crash. It can take a very long time of average returns to climb back out of a 40% or 70% drop in your portfolio (eg playing with speculative fire in a stock like Tesla that could drop by 90% and still be overvalued).

I don't know whether we'll see sustained damage to the economy from whatever the next crash-type event is, such that stocks stay down for a long time, or if we'll see something more like micro crashes more frequently (with QE & low interest rates bouncing valuations back up faster). Either way, my strategy is to take advantage of any event where I can buy value cheaply or cheapish. I don't need that to happen very often, I only need to make sure I get a nice hit when that pitch arrives, and I can safely stay out of the mania while others take all that risk (I seek to unload my previously purchased assets to buyers during the mania, rather than be buy-heavy at that time, in other words; then I'll reload later at a cheaper value). The only way this fails is if values never - literally never - become cheap, or reasonably priced, ever again. I don't believe that's going to be the case. If you generate a huge return from doing this, you can afford to sit out the volatile ending mania stage, even if it lasts multiple years, you become free to disregard all of it, the risk gets assumed by everyone playing in the fire and they're ultimately the desperate sellers I'll buy from later on.

As a side note, this isn't timing markets (which is a common misconception). This is calculating value and making a determination about what one considers a good price to pay for an asset. When Buffett sits out the insanity, as in 1999, he isn't timing anything, he's deciding not to overpay based on his personal judgment about price vs value (price is what you pay, value is what you get). We all make such value judgments, consciously or subconsciously; you have a choice as to whether it's conscious & deliberate or abdicated, you can be calculated about it or you can throw dice or play follow the leader in a mania (eg they're all buying GME on Reddit, so I should too; shit it crashed from $500 to $40). You can train yourself to get good at judging price vs value, or you can offload to someone else's opinion of that. Those are the only choices.