Bitcoin (BTC) vs Ethereum (ETH): comparison
Side-by-side comparison of Bitcoin and Ethereum: how their prices moved, how they differ technically and what each is used for.
BTC and ETH: key specs
| Bitcoin (BTC) | Ethereum (ETH) | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $77,609.00 | $2,563.34 |
| Ticker | BTC | ETH |
| Type | native blockchain coin | native blockchain coin |
| Launched | 2009 | 2015 |
| Created by | Satoshi Nakamoto | Vitalik Buterin |
| Consensus | Proof of Work (SHA-256) | Proof of Stake |
| Block time | ~10 min | ~12 sec |
| Max supply | 21 M BTC | no cap |
| Transaction privacy | public transactions | public transactions |
| Circulating supply | 20.08 M BTC | 122.04 M ETH |
| Market cap | $1.56 T | $313.17 B |
| Market cap rank | #1 | #2 |
CoinGecko data as of Sep 11, 2026, 19:33. How we calculate the data
Price change: BTC vs ETH
Both prices are set to 100 at the start of the period, so the chart shows which coin grew or fell more, not the prices themselves.
| Period | BTC | ETH |
|---|---|---|
| 7 days | −4.84% | −1.28% |
| 30 days | +21.71% | +31.65% |
| 90 days | +20.06% | +47.33% |
The correlation of their daily price changes over the last 90 days is 0.88 (strong).
BTC or ETH: what each is used for
- Long-term store of valueBitcoin
- Smart contracts and appsEthereum
How Bitcoin and Ethereum work
How Bitcoin works
The network uses Proof of Work with the SHA-256 algorithm: miners compete to add a new block roughly every 10 minutes and receive newly issued coins plus fees. Every 210,000 blocks (about four years) the block reward is cut in half, which slows issuance until the 21 million cap is reached. Balances are tracked as unspent transaction outputs (UTXO).
What Bitcoin is used for
Bitcoin is mostly held as a long-term store of value and used as the base asset of the crypto market: most trading pairs, indices and derivatives are priced against it. It is also used for cross-border transfers and, through the Lightning Network, for small fast payments.
How Ethereum works
Since September 2022 Ethereum has used Proof of Stake: validators lock ETH to propose and confirm blocks, with a new slot every 12 seconds. Smart contracts run in the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). Part of every transaction fee is burned, so the net supply depends on network activity.
What Ethereum is used for
ETH is used to pay gas fees, as collateral in DeFi, for staking and as a settlement asset across the ecosystem. Layer-2 networks such as Arbitrum and Optimism also use ETH for fees, which makes it the working currency of a large part of the crypto economy.