How are the two major chains doing in the last period? Is the Bitcoin dominance growing or Ethereum closing in? Let’s take a look.
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We will be looking at data for:
- Inflation and supply
- Active wallets
- Number of daily transactions
- Fees
- Market cap and BTC dominance
The data is extracted from https://www.blockchain.com/charts and https://ethscan.com/, for the period July 2015 – Feb 2024.
Bitcoin has been around since 2009, but Ethereum started with operation in 2015 and from then forward we will be making comparisons.
Inflation and Supply
The limited supply of Bitcoin, the 21M cap is one of its main feature. The Bitcoin monetary policy is well known. Ethereum on the other side has also taken steps in that direction and its has been even deflationary in the last year. Here is the chart for the supply of the two tokens.
Bitcoin is now at 19.6M supply with 93% of its supply now minted and only around 7% more to go. Ethereum is at 120M, six times more tokens in circulation than Bitcoin and it has been around the 120M level for more than a year now. Its supply has even dropped a few 100k in the last period.
Inflation
When we extract the chart for the inflation of the two tokens, for easier comparison we have this:
We can see that back in 2015, when Ethereum was launched both of the tokens had inflation levels of 10% and 15%. Quite high for both of them. Then in 2016 the Bitcoin halving happened and Bitcoin went down to less than 4%. Ethereum also had a drop in 2017 to around 7%. In the last years Bitcoin is following is well know pattern and is now at 1.6% inflation and soon to be 0.8% after the April halving. Ethereum has also reduced its inflation a lot in the last period, especially after the Proof of stake move and now has a 0.43% bas inflation, with most of it being burned and as we can see its mostly around the 0% in the last period. Still in theory Ethereum has unlimited supply.
Active Wallets
about active wallets? How many have been used? Here is the chart.
When we look at the numbers of active wallets Bitcoin is in the lead. Ethereum came close to Bitcoin in the previous bull run, at the end of 2017 and the beginning of 2018. On a few occasions ETH has surpassed BTC in number of daily active wallets. It was close again in 2021, but since then BTC has performed better.
When we zoom in 2023-2024 we get this:
Bitcoin had some spikes in the period, usually with the adoption of the second layer tokens boosted by the Ordinals protocol. There has been a spike in September going from 700k to more than 1M active wallets, and another spike in the last days because of the price increase. Ethereum is also seeing an increase in the number of active wallets in the last days.
On average, in the last period Bitcoin has around 700k daily active wallets, while Ethereum is around 450k daily active wallets.
Number of Daily Transactions
Here is the chart for the number of daily transactions.
In terms of daily transactions Ethereum is in lead in front of Bitcoin.
Ethereum has overtaken Bitcoin in the previous bull run in 2017 and has been leading since then. In the last period Ethereum has around 1M transactions per day.
What’s interesting we can notice the spike in the Bitcoin transaction in the last period. This is due to the ordinal protocols, NFTs and tokens on Bitcoin. In the last period there is around 700k transactions per day on Bitcoin.
When we zoom in 2023-2024 we get this:
Bitcoin is obviously experiencing more volatility in the last period due to the new use cases there. On the other hand, Ethereum has seen a steady number of transactions in the period.
As we know Ethereum as a smart contract’s platform has a lot of different operations and transactions that can be made on chain, while Bitcoin is used only for one purpose, and that is transferring tokens from one wallet to another.
Ethereum has a smaller number of daily active wallets than Bitcoin, but obviously those wallets are making more transactions than the Bitcoin wallets. On average in the last period Bitcoin has around 400k transactions while Ethereum 1.1M.
Fees
The chart for the fees looks like this.
These are the average daily fees per transaction in $ value.
We can notice the volatility in the fees. Back in 2022 especially on the Ethereum network. The fees on Ethereum were as high as 50$, and have dropped to few dollars at the end of 2022. In 2023 fees on Ethereum increased and this has continued in 2024 with the average fees on Ethereum now close to 20$.
For Bitcoin, we can notice the sharp increase in May 2023. This is due to the NFS and tokens. At one point the fees on the Bitcoin network reached 30$. Another sharp move in November and December and a retrace in the last months. Bitcoin fees are now somewhere between 5 to 10 USD, while Ethereum up to 20 USD per transaction.
Bitcoin and Ethereum Market Cap
The interesting topic for Bitcoin and Ethereum is the flippening, or will Ethereum surpass Bitcoin in terms of market cap and become no.1 crypto.
Here is the historical chart for the Bitcoin VS Ethereum market cap.
We can see that at first in 2015 when Ethereum was launched it had a very low market cap compared to Bitcoin. As time progressed in the bull run of 2017 Ethereum has come close to the market cap of Bitcoin on few occasions, but only for a short period of time.
In the last two years the ratio of the market cap for Bitcoin and Ethereum has been in a tight range around the 70%-30% share. In the last period Bitcoin has increased its dominance slightly, and now the ratio in the market cap is 75% BTC vs 25% ETH.
The pie chart looks like this:
At the moment Bitcoin is around 1.2 trillionmarketcap while Ethereum is around 400 billions.
Summary
Bitcoin is leading when it comes to active wallets, while Ethereum is in the lead for the number of transactions, although BTC has seen some increase in activity in the last period. The fees on the Bitcoin network have went up, due to the ordinals protocol, NFTs and tokens, but are low in the last months, while they are up on the Ethereum network.
When it comes to the market cap, the 70% - 30% ratio has held for a long time, but now Bitcoin has increased its dominance to 75% to 25%.
While these two chains are now totally different in design and function, Bitcoin seems stronger than ever and shows it can do things that Ethereum does as well. Plus the overall ETF approval has pushed Bitcoin higher. Maybe when/if Ethereum gets its ETF it will surge more in price, but this is still unknow.
All the best
@dalz
the 2 big boys of crypto and for long time
Thanks for review.
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Bitcoin and Ethereum seem to be slugging it out for who would be King 😄
They are the two most popular cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin is clearly the king and Ether is facing a lot of competition lately, I don't know if it will be able to maintain itself with fees as a handicap.
Thank you for the overview
Nice one!
Both are fine, performed very well at the moment, people have a lot of faith in both of them, but if I had the money, I would invest in Ethereum. Thanks alot for review.
https://reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/1b4mevw/bitcoin_vs_ethereum_data_on_wallets_transactions/
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Thank you for this overview
Thank you for sharing these data. It seems BTC is still king, and ETH has a long way to go before it catches up. There is still the BTC halving, and the ETH ETFs, so it will be interesting to see how these change in the coming months.
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Bitcoin still remains the King of all coins, no doubt.
Super interesting and informative article.
Thank you @dalz for always providing awesome content.
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both chains are doing good. but bitcoin need to evolve.