Bitcoin and Ethereum are the two largest crypto networks, and they were built for different jobs. Bitcoin is a deliberately narrow system for holding and sending one scarce asset; Ethereum is a general-purpose platform whose currency, ether, pays for running programs. That split shows up in their supply rules, security models, fees and price behavior. This comparison puts the facts in one table, then explains each row with figures checked on November 2, 2026, live prices and the risks each carries. For the rest of the market, see the crypto hub.
What is the difference between bitcoin and ethereum?
Bitcoin is a fixed-supply digital currency secured by mining, while Ethereum is a programmable network secured by staked ether, and the table compares them point by point.
| Bitcoin (BTC) | Ethereum (ETH) | |
|---|---|---|
| Original purpose | Whitepaper title (2008): "A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System" | Whitepaper title (2013): "A Next-Generation Smart Contract and Decentralized Application Platform" |
| Launched | January 3, 2009 | July 30, 2015 |
| Supply policy | Fixed schedule with a hard cap just under 21 million | No cap; validators earn new ether and base fees are burned |
| Supply on November 2, 2026 | About 20.11 million BTC by the schedule | 122.18 million ETH (Etherscan) |
| New supply in November 2026 | 450 BTC a day, halving around April 2028 | About 2,970 ETH a day issued, minus fees burned |
| Consensus | Proof of work (SHA-256 mining) | Proof of stake since September 15, 2022 |
| Block timing | Random, about 10 minutes on average | One slot every 12 seconds |
| Finality | Probabilistic; six confirmations, about an hour, is a common rule | Finalized after about two epochs, roughly 13 minutes |
| Typical fee, November 1 to 2, 2026 | About 312 satoshis per transaction on average | Base fee near 0.04 gwei; a plain transfer about 0.0000011 ETH |
| Smart contracts | Limited scripting for conditions such as multisig and time locks | General-purpose programs that run on the Ethereum Virtual Machine |
| US spot ETFs | Approved January 10, 2024 | Approved May 23, 2024, trading since July 23, 2024; some funds stake since October 2025 |
| Annualized volatility, 2021 to 2025 | About 59% | About 79% |
| Fall from 2025 peak to 2026 low (daily close) | −53.0% | −67.6% |
| US agency view | Digital commodity in the SEC's March 2026 interpretation | Digital commodity in the same interpretation |
Supply, fee and staking figures come from mempool.space, Etherscan and validatorqueue.com; volatility and drawdowns are calculated from Coinbase daily closes in FRED, the St. Louis Fed's database. By convention, Bitcoin with a capital B is the network and bitcoin the coin, while ether is the coin that runs on Ethereum.
What is each network designed to do?
Bitcoin was designed to move and store one asset without a middleman, while Ethereum was designed as a shared computer that runs programs anyone can deploy.
Satoshi Nakamoto's 2008 paper set out to solve double spending for "a purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash." Bitcoin's scripting language is deliberately narrow: it can require several signatures or lock coins until a date, but it cannot run open-ended programs. Changes to its consensus rules are rare; SegWit activated in August 2017 and Taproot in November 2021.
Vitalik Buterin's whitepaper, published on November 27, 2013, described "a blockchain with a built-in fully fledged Turing-complete programming language." Those programs, called smart contracts, run stablecoins, token exchanges and lending apps, and every step a contract takes costs gas paid in ether. Ethereum upgrades far more often: in 2025 alone, Pectra on May 7 changed staking and wallet accounts, and Fusaka on December 3 raised capacity. What is ethereum and what is bitcoin cover each design in depth, and what is DeFi covers the apps built on contracts.
How do bitcoin and ether supply rules compare?
Bitcoin's issuance follows a fixed schedule toward a cap just under 21 million, while ether's supply has no cap and rises or falls with staking rewards and fee burning.
Every bitcoin ever issued comes from block subsidies, currently 3.125 BTC per block, since block 840,000 on April 20, 2024, and the subsidy halves every 210,000 blocks, roughly every four years. Anyone can compute bitcoin's supply at any future block, and the halving guide lays out the dates.
Ether works the other way round. Validators receive new ether for proposing blocks and voting, and the amount depends on how much ether is staked in total, while the base fee of every transaction is destroyed under the EIP-1559 rule adopted in August 2021. When activity is heavy, the burn can outrun issuance and supply shrinks; when it is light, supply grows. Etherscan put total supply at 122,180,205 ETH on November 2, 2026, against about 120,520,000 at the Merge in September 2022 according to ethereum.org, a rise of 1.4% in just over four years.
Worked example: New supply in one day, early November 2026
- Bitcoin: 144 blocks × 3.125 BTC = 450 BTC a day, or 164,250 a year, about 0.82% of the 20.11 million already issued.
- Ether issued: validatorqueue.com put the staking yield at 2.45% on 44.3 million staked ETH, which implies about 1.09 million ETH a year, or roughly 2,970 a day, nearly all of it newly created.
- Ether burned: blocks were using about 30 million gas each at a base fee near 0.043 gwei, so 7,200 blocks a day burned about 30,000,000 × 0.043 × 7,200 ÷ 1,000,000,000 ≈ 9 ETH.
- Result: ether's net supply was growing about 0.89% a year, slightly faster than bitcoin's 0.82%. Bitcoin's rate is fixed by code and halves in 2028; ether's would change with staking levels and network demand.
Which is cheaper and faster to use?
Ethereum settles faster and was far cheaper per transfer in November 2026, though fees on both networks can jump when demand spikes.
Bitcoin fees are bids for block space measured in satoshis per virtual byte, so they depend on a transaction's size, not its value. Ethereum fees are gas used times the gas price, where gas measures computation: a plain ether transfer always uses 21,000 gas, while a token swap can use several times as much. Gas fees explained covers Ethereum's base fee and tip.
Speed has two parts, the wait for inclusion and the wait for safety. Bitcoin blocks average about 10 minutes and six confirmations about an hour; an Ethereum slot comes every 12 seconds and finality follows in about 13 minutes. The guide to how blockchain works explains confirmations and finality.
Worked example: Fees for one simple transfer at quiet and busy times
Fees do not depend on the amount sent, so these hold whether you move $50 or $50,000. Dollar figures use assumed prices of $80,000 per bitcoin and $2,300 per ether, not live quotes.
- Bitcoin, quiet (early November 2026): a 141-vbyte payment at 1 sat/vB costs 141 satoshis, about $0.11.
- Bitcoin, busy: at 200 sat/vB, the median rate in the April 2024 halving block, the same payment costs 28,200 satoshis, about $22.56.
- Ether, quiet: 21,000 gas at 0.053 gwei (base fee plus a small tip) costs 1,113 gwei, or 0.0000011 ETH, about a quarter of a cent.
- Ether, busy: at a hypothetical 20 gwei the transfer costs 420,000 gwei, or 0.00042 ETH, about $0.97, and a contract call assumed to use 150,000 gas costs 0.003 ETH, about $6.90.
Which network is harder to attack?
Both are costly to attack: rewriting Bitcoin needs more hashing power than all honest miners, and reversing finalized Ethereum blocks would destroy a third of staked ether.
Bitcoin's network ran at about 1,046 exahashes a second on November 2, 2026. Ethereum had about 44.3 million ETH staked, roughly 36% of supply, across 815,282 active validators. Their weak points differ. Bitcoin's block production is concentrated in a handful of mining pools, and its security budget depends on a subsidy that keeps halving while fees stay small. Ethereum's stake is concentrated among large staking services and exchanges, and its more complex software has more places for bugs, although several independently built client programs limit the damage any single bug can do.
Can you invest in bitcoin and ether through ETFs?
Yes: US spot bitcoin ETPs have traded since January 2024 and spot ether ETPs since July 2024, and some ether funds now stake part of their holdings.
The SEC approved the first spot bitcoin products on January 10, 2024, and the exchange rules for spot ether products on May 23, 2024, with trading starting on July 23. On October 6, 2025, two ether funds became the first US spot crypto ETPs to stake part of their holdings, so their returns can include staking rewards after the sponsor's share. A fund swaps key-management risk for fund risks: an annual expense ratio, trading only on weekdays and a custodian you do not choose. Bitcoin ETFs vs owning bitcoin and ether ETFs explained compare the routes.
Which has been more volatile, bitcoin or ether?
Ether has been the more volatile of the two in every calendar year from 2017 through 2025, measured by the swings in daily closing prices.
The latest quotes are $78,218.70 (Nov 2, 2026) for one bitcoin and $2,287.65 (Nov 2, 2026) for one ether. The table below compares their returns, worst declines and past-year volatility from the same daily data.
| Asset | Last close | 1 year | 3 years (per year) | 5 years (per year) | 10 years (per year) | Worst drop from a high | Volatility (1 year) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bitcoin | $78,688.00 | -28.8% | +31.1% | +4.5% | n/a | -83.2% (Dec 15, 2018) | 44.0% |
| Ethereum | $2,309.83 | -40.9% | +8.7% | -12.8% | n/a | -93.3% (Dec 14, 2018) | 60.8% |
Compare the two rows rather than reading either alone: the multi-year columns show which asset rewarded holders more over each stretch, and the drawdown and volatility columns show what each demanded in return. A higher volatility figure means wider daily swings in both directions, and one window can flatter or punish either coin depending on where it starts. If the table is unavailable, the bitcoin and ethereum price pages still show the latest prices and charts.
Our own calculation from FRED's Coinbase closes gives the longer record. Volatility here is the annualized standard deviation of daily returns.
| Year | Bitcoin volatility | Ether volatility | Correlation of daily returns |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | 93% | 132% | 0.39 |
| 2018 | 84% | 111% | 0.82 |
| 2019 | 70% | 83% | 0.83 |
| 2020 | 79% | 103% | 0.87 |
| 2021 | 81% | 107% | 0.77 |
| 2022 | 64% | 87% | 0.90 |
| 2023 | 44% | 47% | 0.83 |
| 2024 | 53% | 64% | 0.80 |
| 2025 | 42% | 75% | 0.82 |
| 2026 through October 31 | 42% | 57% | 0.90 |
Ether's declines have also been deeper in each of the last three downturns:
| Downturn | Bitcoin, peak to low | Ether, peak to low |
|---|---|---|
| 2018 | −83.8% (December 16, 2017 to December 15, 2018) | −94.0% (January 13, 2018 to December 14, 2018) |
| 2021 to 2022 | −76.7% (November 8, 2021 to November 21, 2022) | −79.3% (November 8, 2021 to June 18, 2022) |
| 2025 to 2026 | −53.0% (October 5, 2025 to June 30, 2026) | −67.6% (August 21, 2025 to June 28, 2026) |
On October 31, 2026, bitcoin closed 37.9% below its peak and ether 53.4% below its own. Both can lose most or all of their value, and these swings are a record of the past, not a forecast; the crypto market cycles guide explains why cycles do not work as a timing tool.
Do bitcoin and ether prices move together?
Yes, closely: the correlation of their daily returns was 0.81 from 2021 through 2025 and 0.90 in 2026 through October.
A correlation of 1 would mean they always moved in step, and 0 that they were unrelated. At 0.8 to 0.9, a bad day for one has usually been a bad day for the other, and in the latest downturn their lowest closes came two days apart, on June 28 and June 30, 2026. The exception was 2017, when the correlation was only 0.39 and the two often moved independently. Holding both spreads exposure across two designs and developer communities, but it does little to soften a broad crypto sell-off. The bigger question for diversification is how much crypto to hold at all, which how much crypto to hold and crypto vs stocks address, and the DCA calculator shows how buying either coin on a fixed schedule would have worked.
What risks does each one carry?
Both carry deep price risk and custody risk, but bitcoin's specific risks center on its mining economics, while ether's center on its software and staking layers.
Bitcoin-specific risks
- Security budget: the subsidy halves again around April 2028, and fees were only about half a percent of miner revenue in the month to November 2, 2026.
- Mining geography and policy: mining can be pushed out of a country quickly, as China's 2021 crackdown showed, and a few pools find most blocks.
- Slow change: conservative upgrades protect the rules but make new features slow to arrive.
Ether-specific risks
- Contract and app risk: tokens and apps built on Ethereum can be exploited even when the base network works as designed.
- Staking risk: validators can be slashed, and a large share of stake sits with a few providers; what is staking covers the trade-offs.
- Value capture: with fees this low, ether's supply is rising, and activity that moves to layer 2 networks pays the main chain less.
- Upgrade risk: two major upgrades in 2025 alone mean more code changes that have to go right.
Risks they share
- Price: both have fallen more than 75% before, and either can lose most or all of its value.
- Custody: lost keys and failed platforms can wipe out holdings; how to store crypto safely covers the basics.
- Rules and tax: the CLARITY Act, which would set a federal market-structure framework, stalled in the Senate in September 2026, and the IRS taxes both coins as property, with brokers reporting sales on Form 1099-DA, as the 1099-DA guide explains.