Bitcoin trades at $76,953 with a market cap of approximately $1.54 trillion on May 18, 2026, while Ethereum trades at $2,120.40 at a $255.6 billion market cap. The two assets compete for the same pool of risk capital, but their core mechanics diverged sharply after the September 2022 Merge.
Bitcoin’s shows a proof-of-work network that consumes around 95.5 TWh of electricity annually, as the best-guess 2025 estimate, while Ethereum’s shows a post-Merge consensus that runs on a fraction of that and has burned more ETH than it issued at several intervals since September 2022. The data H2s below cover market cap, supply, hashrate, fees, ETF flows, energy footprint, and the volatility delta between the two assets.
Key Takeaways
- Bitcoin‘s market cap of $1.54 trillion is roughly six times Ethereum’s $255.6 billion cap as of May 18, 2026.
- Bitcoin has mined 20,030,493 of its 21,000,000 maximum supply, leaving under 5% still to be issued through future halvings.
- Ethereum‘s 30-day EIP-1559 burn rate runs at approximately 0.115617 ETH per minute, pacing toward roughly 60,768 ETH burned annually at that rate.
- Bitcoin’s network hashrate is approximately 957.75 EH/s versus zero proof-of-work for Ethereum after its September 2022 Merge.
- BlackRock’s IBIT held approximately $66.9 billion in assets under management as of May 7, 2026, representing about 66% of the US spot Bitcoin ETF complex.
- Ethereum carries 52.05% of all-chain DeFi total value locked at $43.36 billion, more than eight times Bitcoin’s $5.09 billion on-chain TVL.
- The Cambridge CBECI 2025 best-guess for Bitcoin energy use is about 95.5 TWh annualized at roughly 13 GW of daily power demand.
Editor’s Choice
- Bitcoin’s all-time high: $126,080.00 reached on October 6, 2025.
- Ethereum’s all-time high: $4,946.05 reached on August 24, 2025.
- Bitcoin 1-year price change: -25.54% from May 2025 through May 18, 2026.
- Ethereum 1-year price change: -14.56% over the same window.
- 24-hour Bitcoin trading volume: $25.59 billion on May 18, 2026.
- 24-hour Ethereum trading volume: $11.01 billion on the same date.
- Latest Bitcoin block height: 949,894, carrying 2,994 transactions.
Recent Developments
- May 7, 2026: BlackRock’s IBIT recorded $134.6 million in net inflows in a single session, confirming the institutional bid for Bitcoin exposure.
- April 2026: US spot Bitcoin ETF complex aggregate AUM cleared approximately $101 billion, with BlackRock’s IBIT representing roughly 66% of that total.
- February 25, 2026: Cumulative net inflows into US spot Ethereum ETFs reached $11.641 billion since their July 2024 launch.
- Q1 2026: Cumulative spot crypto ETF trading volume surpassed $2 trillion, doubling from the first $1 trillion in roughly half the time.
- Early January 2026: Total US spot Ethereum ETF assets reached $19.1 billion, representing 5.06% of Ethereum’s market capitalization at that point.
- 2025 full year: Cambridge CBECI methodology updated its annualized Bitcoin energy best-guess to approximately 95.5 TWh at about 13 GW of daily power demand.
Market Capitalization and Valuation
- Bitcoin market cap on May 18, 2026: $1,539,793,164,295, ranked #1 by global crypto market cap.
- Ethereum market cap on the same date: $255,645,274,351, ranked #2 globally.
- Ethereum’s market cap is approximately 16.6% of Bitcoin’s as of May 18, 2026.
- Bitcoin’s 24-hour trading volume: $25,587,638,883, roughly 2.3 times Ethereum’s same-day volume.
- Ethereum’s 24-hour trading volume: $11,006,659,204 on May 18, 2026.
| Metric | Bitcoin | Ethereum |
|---|---|---|
| Market cap rank | #1 | #2 |
| Market cap | $1.54 trillion | $255.6 billion |
| 24h trading volume | $25.59 billion | $11.01 billion |
| Genesis date | January 3, 2009 | July 30, 2015 |
| Consensus algorithm | SHA-256 proof-of-work | Proof-of-stake (post-Merge) |
Source: CoinGecko coin pages for Bitcoin and Ethereum
The market-cap gap is largely a function of where institutional capital lands.
Price Performance and Historical Returns
- Bitcoin all-time high price: $126,080.00 on October 6, 2025.
- Ethereum all-time high price: $4,946.05 on August 24, 2025.
- Bitcoin 1-year price change through May 18, 2026: -25.54%.
- Ethereum 1-year price change through May 18, 2026: -14.56%.
- Bitcoin 30-day price change: -0.08%, essentially flat.
- Ethereum 30-day price change: -11.81%, notably weaker than Bitcoin’s same-window read.
| Window | Bitcoin | Ethereum |
|---|---|---|
| All-time high | $126,080.00 (Oct 6, 2025) | $4,946.05 (Aug 24, 2025) |
| 1-year change | -25.54% | -14.56% |
| 30-day change | -0.08% | -11.81% |
| Current price | $76,953.00 | $2,120.40 |
| Drawdown from ATH | -39.0% | -57.1% |
Source: CoinGecko market data feeds
The drawdown asymmetry signals a steeper bid-side for BTC even within the same risk-off cycle.
By the numbers: Bitcoin’s drawdown of approximately 39% from its October 2025 ATH of $126,080 is narrower than Ethereum’s 57% retracement from $4,946.05 in August 2025, according to CoinGecko’s price feeds. The asymmetry signals a steeper bid-side for BTC even within the same risk-off cycle.
Supply and Monetary Policy
- Bitcoin circulating supply on May 18, 2026: 20,030,493 BTC of a maximum 21,000,000 cap.
- Bitcoin has mined approximately 95.4% of its hard-capped supply.
- Ethereum circulating supply: 120,685,747 ETH with no protocol-defined hard cap.
- Ethereum’s 30-day EIP-1559 burn rate: approximately 0.115617 ETH per minute in late May 2026.
- At the 30-day pace, Ethereum is burning roughly 60,768 ETH per year.
- Bitcoin block reward after the April 2024 halving: 3.125 BTC per block, with the next halving scheduled for spring 2028.
| Mechanic | Bitcoin | Ethereum |
|---|---|---|
| Issuance source | Block reward (3.125 BTC per block) | Validator issuance (variable) |
| Burn / destruction | None | EIP-1559 base-fee burn |
| Supply cap | 21,000,000 BTC | None |
| Supply-cap framing | hard cap of 21 million | no protocol cap |
Source: CoinGecko, Ultrasound Money
Bitcoin’s scarcity is a fixed-supply ceiling; Ethereum’s is a fee-burning floor that flexes with use.
Is Ethereum deflationary while Bitcoin still has new issuance?
Yes, at current activity levels. Ethereum burns roughly 60,768 ETH per year at its 30-day pace under EIP-1559. Bitcoin continues issuing 3.125 BTC per 10-minute block toward the 21 million cap. When ETH fee burn exceeds validator issuance, supply contracts; when fee activity drops, supply grows again.
Network Security: Hashrate vs Stake
- Bitcoin current network hashrate is approximately 957.75 EH/s (957.75 exahashes per second).
- Bitcoin mining difficulty: 136,607,070,854,775 as of May 18, 2026.
- Ethereum consensus-layer staked balances total: 39,076,536 ETH, securing the proof-of-stake chain.
- Ethereum cumulative consensus-layer deposits since the Merge: 82,185,002 ETH deposited by validators.
- Approximately 32.4% of all ETH is currently staked on the consensus layer.
| Dimension | Bitcoin | Ethereum |
|---|---|---|
| Consensus | Proof-of-work (SHA-256) | Proof-of-stake (Casper FFG + LMD GHOST) |
| Security primitive | Hashrate (~957.75 EH/s) | Staked ETH (~39.08 million) |
| Block producer reward | 3.125 BTC + fees | Variable validator rewards |
| Time-to-finality | ~60 minutes (6 confirmations) | ~12.8 minutes (2 epochs) |
| Attack vector | 51% hashrate | 33%+ slashing-cost barrier |
Source: mempool.space, Ultrasound Money supply parts
How does Bitcoin mining differ from Ethereum staking?
Bitcoin pays its security budget in electricity and ASIC hardware, producing roughly 957.75 EH/s of aggregate hashpower. Ethereum pays in capital opportunity cost: validators deposit 32 ETH each, today totaling about 39.08 million ETH in validator-staked balances. The two systems trade energy for capital but produce a similar dollar cost-to-attack.
Transaction Fees
- Bitcoin recommended fastest fee on May 18, 2026: 2 sat/vB for next-block confirmation.
- Bitcoin half-hour, hour, and economy fee tiers: 1 sat/vB across all three tiers.
- Bitcoin block 949,894 total fees: 1,877,044 satoshis collected from 2,994 transactions.
- Block 949,894’s total fees translate to approximately $1,444.66 at the spot BTC price.
The 2-sat/vB fastest tier signals slack mempool demand in May 2026; read this number in cycle context, not as a permanent state.
Which has higher transaction fees, Bitcoin or Ethereum?
Bitcoin’s fastest-tier transaction at 2 sat/vB for a 140-vB SegWit transaction costs roughly $0.22 at the current BTC price. ETH gas during the same window varies from a few dollars for a transfer to ten times that for a DeFi swap. Bitcoin clusters near the cheap end; ETH spreads wider but enables programmability that the Bitcoin script cannot match.
Throughput and Block Times
- Bitcoin block time: 10 minutes per block target.
- Ethereum slot time post-Merge: approximately 12 seconds per slot, around 32 slots per epoch.
- Bitcoin latest block tx count: 2,994 transactions in block 949,894.
- Block 949,894 clears roughly 5 transactions per second at the block’s average rate.
| Metric | Bitcoin | Ethereum |
|---|---|---|
| Block time / slot time | ~10 minutes | ~12 seconds |
| Approx. native TPS | ~5-7 | ~15-25 |
| Block 949,894 (BTC) tx count | 2,994 | n/a |
| Layer-2 throughput | Lightning Network | Arbitrum, Base, Optimism, zkSync |
Source: mempool.space block data, Ethereum spec
DeFi Total Value Locked
- Ethereum DeFi TVL: $43,363,233,721, the largest single-chain TVL on May 18, 2026.
- Bitcoin DeFi ecosystem TVL: $5,089,271,203, up from near-zero before BRC-20 and Runes opened on-chain primitives.
- Ethereum’s share of all-chain DeFi TVL: 52.05% of the $83.3 billion total.
- Ethereum’s DeFi TVL is approximately 8.5 times the size of Bitcoin’s.
- Solana ranks #2 at $5.93 billion; BSC #3 at $5.50 billion; Tron #4 at $5.11 billion.
The DeFi TVL gap signals that the two networks no longer compete for the same use case.
Spot ETF Comparison
- BlackRock IBIT AUM on May 7, 2026: approximately $66.9 billion, the largest single-issuer spot Bitcoin ETP.
- US spot Bitcoin ETF complex aggregate AUM: approximately $101 billion, with IBIT representing about 66%.
- IBIT single-session inflow on May 7, 2026: $134.6 million in net subscriptions.
- US spot Ethereum ETF cumulative net inflows since July 2024 launch: $11.641 billion by February 25, 2026.
- US spot Ethereum ETF total AUM in early January 2026: $19.1 billion, representing 5.06% of Ethereum’s market cap.
- BlackRock’s IBIT alone, at $66.9 billion on May 7, 2026, is approximately 3.5 times the size of the entire US spot Ethereum ETF complex’s $19.1 billion AUM reported in early January 2026.
Key finding: Per The Block’s Q1 2026 print, cumulative spot crypto ETF trading volume passed $2 trillion, doubling the first $1 trillion in roughly half the time. The acceleration is asymmetric: Bitcoin ETFs hold a roughly 5x AUM lead over Ethereum ETFs, a gap wider than the underlying market-cap ratio of about 6x would predict.
The ETF gap is the clearest evidence that institutional allocators view the two assets differently.
Volatility Comparison
- Bitcoin 30-day price change: –0.08% through May 18, 2026.
- Ethereum 30-day price change: -11.81% over the same window.
- Bitcoin 1-year price change: -25.54%.
- Ethereum 1-year price change: -14.56%.
- Ethereum’s 30-day price move was approximately 148 times the magnitude of Bitcoin’s same-window change in May 2026.
Is Ethereum more volatile than Bitcoin?
By 30-day rolling change, yes. Through May 18, 2026, Ethereum moved -11.81% while Bitcoin moved -0.08% across the same window. The 1-year picture inverts: BTC -25.54% vs ETH -14.56%, so the volatility verdict depends on the window. ETH’s beta to BTC historically tracks above 1.0 in risk-off cycles.
Mining vs Staking Energy Footprint
- Cambridge CBECI 2025 best-guess Bitcoin energy consumption: approximately 95.5 TWh annualized at roughly 13 GW of daily power demand.
- Cambridge Judge Business School 2023 CBECI point estimate: approximately 120 TWh with a range of 67 TWh to 240 TWh.
- CBECI 2024 point estimate: 19.0 GW of power demand, corresponding to 170 TWh annualized, with a range of 80 TWh lower to 390 TWh upper.
- US Energy Information Administration estimates that the share of crypto mining electricity is between 0.6% and 2.3% of total US electricity consumption in 2023.
- EIA identified 137 cryptocurrency mining facilities in the United States in 2024.
| Year | CBECI Bitcoin point estimate (TWh) | Range (TWh) |
|---|---|---|
| 2023 | ~120 | 67 to 240 |
| 2024 | ~170 (19 GW point demand) | 80 to 390 |
| 2025 | ~95.5 (13 GW point demand) | not disclosed |
Source: Cambridge CCAF CBECI methodology page, Cambridge Judge Business School
Ethereum’s post-Merge energy footprint sits orders of magnitude below either chart entry. The validator network runs on ordinary commodity servers rather than ASICs, eliminating the hashrate-driven power draw that defines Bitcoin’s environmental profile. CoinLaw’s pillar coverage of crypto adoption rates by country tracks how this energy delta has shaped national policy in jurisdictions running grid-strain studies.
Worth noting: Per Cambridge CCAF’s methodology page, the 95.5 TWh 2025 estimate is the model’s best guess; the lower and upper bounds widen the range materially. Year-over-year comparisons need to read the range, not the headline.
Network Issuance Rate Comparison
- Bitcoin annualized inflation rate post-2024 halving: approximately 0.83% of circulating supply.
- Ethereum 1-hour burn rate annualized: roughly 11,304 ETH per year at the 60-minute pace.
- Ethereum 1-day burn rate annualized: approximately 15,432 ETH per year.
- Ethereum 7-day burn rate annualized: approximately 40,465 ETH per year.
- Ethereum 30-day burn rate annualized: approximately 60,768 ETH per year.
- Bitcoin remaining supply to be mined: approximately 969,507 BTC through future halvings.
| Window | ETH burn rate (per min) | ETH burn rate (annualized) |
|---|---|---|
| 1-hour | 0.021507 | ~11,304 |
| 1-day | 0.029360 | ~15,432 |
| 7-day | 0.076989 | ~40,465 |
| 30-day | 0.115617 | ~60,768 |
Source: Ultrasound Money burn-rate API
Adoption Footprint
- Spot crypto ETF cumulative trading volume: $2 trillion through Q1 2026, doubling from $1 trillion in half the time.
- Ethereum DeFi TVL share of all-chain DeFi: 52.05% at $43.36 billion.
- US spot Bitcoin ETF AUM: approximately $101 billion as of April 2026.
- US Bitcoin ETF complex AUM of $101 billion in April 2026 is approximately 5.3 times the US Ethereum ETF complex AUM of $19.1 billion reported in early January 2026.
- Stablecoin market cap (separately tracked): see Stablecoins for the dollar-pegged settlement layer that complements both networks.
Daily Block Activity and Throughput Snapshot
- Bitcoin latest block height: 949,894 on May 18, 2026.
- Block 949,894 transaction count: 2,994 transactions.
- Block 949,894 total fees: 1,877,044 satoshis collected.
- Ethereum consensus-layer slot at the same observation: slot 14,354,623.
- Ethereum execution-layer current block: block 25,119,780.
| Snapshot field | Bitcoin (May 18, 2026) | Ethereum (May 18, 2026) |
|---|---|---|
| Latest block / slot | block 949,894 | slot 14,354,623 |
| Execution block | n/a | 25,119,780 |
| Transactions in block | 2,994 | n/a (slot-based) |
| Block fees (USD est.) | ~$1,444.66 | variable per slot |
Source: mempool.space blocks API, Ultrasound Money supply parts
Conclusion
The two largest crypto networks now occupy different competitive lanes. Bitcoin’s $1.54 trillion market cap commands the institutional store-of-value position, demonstrated by IBIT’s approximately $66.9 billion AUM and the spot ETF complex’s $101 billion-plus total. Ethereum commands the programmable settlement position, demonstrated by its 52.05% share of all-chain DeFi TVL at $43.36 billion. The roughly six-to-one market cap ratio understates the divergence in use case and overstates it in the ETF-flow split.
The next axis of comparison is settlement assurance per joule. Bitcoin’s 95.5 TWh annual energy budget buys a 957 EH/s safety floor for monetary settlement; Ethereum’s post-Merge consensus buys validator-staked finality on roughly 39 million ETH for a fraction of that grid load.
