Bitcoin vs. Solana Statistics 2025: Market Cap, Speed & Sustainability Compared

In the early days of crypto, Bitcoin was the only name that mattered. But fast forward to 2025, and the narrative has evolved. While Bitcoin remains the pillar of the decentralized revolution, Solana has carved out its territory, building a reputation for speed and innovation.

From institutional investments to NFT volumes, the contrast between Bitcoin and Solana is less about which is “better” and more about which excels in specific areas. If you’re an investor, developer, or simply curious, this article unpacks the real numbers that matter in 2025.

Blockchain Throughput Comparison

• Ethereum handles just 0.08 transactions per unit, making it one of the least scalable platforms in this list.
• Polygon performs slightly better with 0.1, offering modest improvements in scalability over Ethereum.
• Ethereum 2.0 increases throughput to 1.3, showing incremental progress from its predecessor.
• Celestia slightly surpasses Ethereum 2.0 with 1.4, indicating early adoption potential for modular blockchains.
• Avail reaches 6.4, reflecting growing capabilities in data availability-focused chains.
• EigenLayer supports 15 transactions, representing a notable leap in scalability from earlier entries.
• Sui, Aptos, and other next-gen blockchains deliver 100, showcasing the promise of newer architectures.
• Solana achieves 125, making it one of the top-performing general-purpose blockchains in terms of throughput.
• Solana: Firedancer leads the pack with an impressive 1,250, making it over 10x faster than standard Solana and by far the most scalable in this list.

Market Capitalization Comparison

• Bitcoin’s total market capitalization in 2025 is approximately $1.38 trillion, maintaining its top rank in crypto by a wide margin.
• Solana’s market cap has climbed to $82.1 billion, making it the 5th largest cryptocurrency by market cap.
• In 2024, Bitcoin’s market dominance was 52%, which dipped slightly to 48.9% in 2025 due to rising competition.
• Solana’s market share in total crypto capitalization grew from 2.1% in 2024 to 2.9% in 2025.
• The year-over-year growth of Solana’s market cap from 2024 to 2025 is +56%, whereas Bitcoin saw a more modest +14% increase.
• Bitcoin ETFs under management reached $72 billion in 2025, contributing to market cap stability.
• Solana’s DeFi TVL (Total Value Locked) hit $17.4 billion, boosting its valuation and broader financial use cases.
• The daily trading volume for Bitcoin averages $45 billion, while Solana sees approximately $5.9 billion daily.
• Bitcoin’s fully diluted valuation in 2025 exceeds $1.7 trillion, while Solana’s FDV is just under $93 billion.
• Both assets are listed on over 300 exchanges globally, but Solana sees higher token pairing diversity due to cross-chain functionality.

Transaction Speed and Throughput

• Solana processes 65,000 transactions per second (TPS) in 2025, versus Bitcoin’s 7 TPS, due to fundamentally different architectures.
• The average confirmation time on Solana is 400 milliseconds, compared to Bitcoin’s 10 minutes.
• Solana’s daily transaction count surpassed 30 million, while Bitcoin manages about 340,000 daily.
• In stress tests, Solana’s peak throughput reached 94,000 TPS, with no major failures.
• Bitcoin Lightning Network adoption improved throughput slightly, but still lags at 1,000 TPS max, and is not widely adopted.
• Finality on Solana is achieved within 2 seconds, while Bitcoin’s probabilistic finality remains around 60 minutes (for 6 confirmations).
• Solana’s block time is 400ms, while Bitcoin maintains a fixed 10-minute interval.
• Transaction batching and Layer 2 scaling solutions allow Bitcoin to mimic throughput improvements, but with additional complexity.
• Solana supports parallel transaction execution using Sealevel, improving throughput for smart contract-heavy operations.
• Bitcoin’s mempool congestion in Q1 2025 increased average wait time to over 25 minutes during peak activity.

DEX Trading Volume by Chain

• Total DEX trading volume peaked in Jan 2025 at $358B, marking the highest monthly activity across all chains in this period.
• November 2024 and December 2024 also saw high volumes with $269B and $285B, showing sustained interest in decentralized exchanges before the new year.
• Solana and Ethereum consistently dominated the market share throughout the 6-month period, each representing a large chunk of the DEX volume.
• Arbitrum and Base steadily contributed, reflecting their growing role in Layer 2 scalability and adoption.
• Smaller chains like THORChain, Avalanche, Sonic, and Sui held minor yet consistent shares, indicating niche utility and stable usage.
• After January’s peak, volumes dropped to $224B in February and further to $159B in March, suggesting a market cooldown post-Q1 surge.
• The lowest trading volume was in October 2024, totaling $138B, before rising rapidly in the following months.

Energy Consumption and Environmental Impact

• Bitcoin’s energy consumption in 2025 stands at 141 TWh per year, making it comparable to a mid-sized country.
• Solana consumes 0.0023 TWh per year, a fraction of Bitcoin’s footprint due to its Proof-of-History + Proof-of-Stake design.
• The energy per Bitcoin transaction is estimated at 707 kWh, compared to Solana’s 0.0019 kWh.
• Bitcoin’s carbon emissions reached 73 million metric tons CO₂ equivalent annually in 2025.
• Solana’s annual emissions are estimated to be under 50,000 metric tons CO₂e.
• Solana became carbon-neutral through offset programs and validator efficiency improvements.
• Over 57% of Bitcoin mining now comes from renewable sources.
• Solana validators primarily operate on eco-efficient data centers; green staking incentives were introduced in Q2 2025.
• The Bitcoin Mining Council reports a 17% decrease in fossil fuel reliance among major operations.
• Solana Foundation’s Green Paper 2025 outlines a net-zero commitment by 2027, making it a front-runner in sustainable crypto.

Network Fees and Cost Efficiency

• Solana’s average transaction fee in 2025 remains under $0.00025, ideal for microtransactions and high-frequency apps.
• In contrast, Bitcoin’s average transaction fee has surged to $17.34, largely due to network congestion and Ordinals usage.
• Solana’s average cost per million transactions is under $250, while Bitcoin’s exceeds $17 million.
• Fee volatility on Bitcoin increased 24% year-over-year, especially during peak network load.
• Bitcoin’s Lightning Network helps reduce fee pressure, but only 22% of active wallets use it consistently.
• Over 97% of Solana transactions cost less than $0.001, making it highly cost-effective for developers and dApps.
• The average NFT minting fee on Solana is around $0.04, compared to $45 to $85 on Bitcoin’s Ordinals.
• Token transfers on Solana cost a fraction of a cent, while Bitcoin token layer transfers (e.g., via RSK or Omni) cost multiple dollars.
• Solana gas optimizations in 2025 reduced costs by 12%, following Sealevel upgrades.
• Bitcoin transaction batching offers some savings for exchanges, but costs still scale linearly with usage.

Total Value Locked (TVL) Is Dominated by a Few Blockchains

• Ethereum leads the ecosystem with a dominant 56.8% of total value locked (TVL), showing its continued DeFi supremacy.
• Solana holds 7.03%, maintaining a strong position among Layer 1 chains.
• Tron follows closely with 6.54%, reflecting its active user base and stablecoin activity.
• BSC (Binance Smart Chain) accounts for 4.35%, sustaining its role as a cost-effective DeFi alternative.
• Base, Coinbase’s Layer 2, captures 2.92%, indicating rapid growth and adoption.
• Bitcoin contributes 2.87% to TVL, despite not being a native smart contract platform.
• Arbitrum secures 2.53%, reinforcing its role as a scalable Ethereum Layer 2.
• Avalanche, Sui, Hyperliquid, and Aptos hold 1.21%, 1.14%, 1.1%, and 0.9% respectively, showing moderate but promising adoption.
• The remaining blockchains are grouped as Others, which collectively make up 12.6%, representing a fragmented long tail of niche networks.

Adoption Rates and Wallet

• Bitcoin’s active wallets in 2025 number around 50 million, while Solana surpassed 35 million active wallets.
• Solana wallet creation grew by +44% year-over-year, while Bitcoin’s growth slowed to +9%.
• Mobile wallet usage is dominant: 72% of Solana users access the network via mobile-first apps like Phantom or Solflare.
• Bitcoin leads in hardware wallet adoption, with over 11 million users storing coins on devices like Ledger and Trezor.
• Solana Pay adoption increased by 56%, with integrations in Shopify, Discord, and TikTok-native merchants.
• Bitcoin ATMs worldwide surpassed 43,000 machines, offering global retail access points.
• Solana ecosystem wallets, such as Phantom, have introduced biometric authentication and in-app staking in 2025.
• Bitcoin wallets with multi-sig enabled now represent 31% of custodial addresses.
• Solana-based web wallets have risen in use, with 34% of users preferring browser extensions.
• Bitcoin’s address re-use rate remains a privacy issue; 17.8% of daily transactions involve previously used addresses.

Developer Activity and Ecosystem Growth

• Solana leads developer growth, with over 17,000 monthly active developers in Q2 2025, surpassing Ethereum’s count in certain sectors.
• Bitcoin has around 1,000 active core developers, focused mainly on Bitcoin Core and Lightning upgrades.
• Solana Hackathons in 2025 generated over 800 new projects, including DePIN, DeFi, and gaming dApps.
• Bitcoin development is concentrated, with 93% of contributions made to the Core protocol and a few side ecosystems.
• Over $100 million in Solana grants were distributed by the Solana Foundation in the first half of 2025.
• Solana Foundation GitHub repos saw +38% commit growth, compared to +6% for Bitcoin Core.
• Bitcoin Improvement Proposals (BIPs) increased by only 7 this year, showing slower protocol evolution.
• Developer retention rate on Solana stands at 62%, signaling ecosystem maturity and satisfaction.
• Solana’s modular smart contract tooling (like Anchor and Seahorse) improved development speed by 25% in 2025.
• Bitcoin scripting (Script) remains non-Turing complete, limiting programmability compared to Solana’s Rust-based smart contracts.

Net Bitcoin Flows for Public Companies and ETFs

• In 2025 Q2, public companies saw an 18% increase in bitcoin holdings, while ETFs rose by 8%.
• In 2025 Q1, public companies increased holdings by 17.6%, compared to a modest 0.5% gain for ETFs.
• 2024 Q4 recorded the highest spike, with public companies gaining 66% and ETFs up by 17%.
• During 2024 Q3, bitcoin holdings grew by 11% for public companies and 5% for ETFs.
• The overall trend shows stronger growth in public company holdings versus ETFs throughout the four quarters.

Security and Downtime Incidents

• Bitcoin maintains a perfect uptime record of 100% since 2013, with no protocol-level failures in 2025.
• Solana experienced one minor outage in Q1 2025 lasting 18 minutes, down from 3 major incidents in 2022.
• Solana implemented local fee markets and validator client diversity in 2025 to reduce single-point failures.
• Bitcoin’s hashrate peaked at 540 EH/s in 2025, an all-time high, increasing network security.
• Solana validators now exceed 3,200 globally, with 34% hosted on independent data centers.
• Bitcoin transaction finality is slower but more secure due to proof-of-work consensus and deep block confirmations.
• Solana’s switch to multiple validator clients has reduced coordinated failure risk by 63%.
• Bitcoin nodes number over 18,000 active public full nodes, ensuring decentralization and verification redundancy.
• Solana’s average block propagation time is now <0.3 seconds, reducing orphaned blocks and forks.
• No critical CVEs (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures) were recorded in Bitcoin Core this year; Solana resolved 3 moderate ones with no user impact.

NFT and DeFi Usage Metrics

• Solana hosts over 28 million NFTs, with daily volumes reaching $13.2 million on average.
• Bitcoin Ordinals protocol saw over 55 million inscriptions by mid-2025, but only 3% are actively traded.
• Solana DeFi TVL in 2025 is $17.4 billion, led by platforms like Jito, MarginFi, and Drift.
• Bitcoin DeFi (via RSK and Stacks) TVL remains under $350 million, with limited adoption.
• Solana NFT marketplaces such as Tensor and Magic Eden handle over 60% of all cross-chain NFT trades.
• The average Solana NFT minting fee is $0.04, making it attractive to independent creators.
• NFT trading volume on Bitcoin declined by 17% in Q1 2025 after the Ordinals novelty cooled off.
• Solana’s compressed NFTs allow creators to mint 10,000+ assets for under $100, reshaping gaming and digital art.
• Bitcoin lacks native NFT infrastructure, relying on unconventional inscription techniques.
• Solana NFT holders number 2.1 million unique addresses, outpacing every chain except Ethereum.

MicroStrategy’s Dominance in Public Bitcoin Holdings

• MicroStrategy holds a massive 65.6% of all Bitcoin held by publicly traded companies, solidifying its position as the top corporate BTC holder.
• The rest of the market, including all other public companies combined, holds just 34.4%, showing how concentrated BTC holdings are in a single entity.
• This dominance underscores MicroStrategy’s aggressive accumulation strategy and long-term bullish stance on Bitcoin.

Institutional Investment Trends

• Bitcoin remains the dominant institutional asset, with over $72 billion in ETF assets under management globally.
• Solana institutional exposure has grown rapidly, now totaling $4.9 billion across hedge funds, trusts, and ETFs.
• BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF accounts for $19.6 billion in AUM, launched in late 2024.
• VanEck and 21Shares launched Solana ETFs in Q1 2025, attracting $870 million in inflows within 3 months.
• Over 65% of institutional crypto portfolios include Bitcoin, compared to 18% that now include Solana.
• MicroStrategy’s Bitcoin holdings increased to 254,300 BTC, valued at over $16 billion in 2025.
• Solana saw a 3x increase in venture funding for infrastructure startups, surpassing $1.2 billion YTD.
• Fidelity’s digital assets unit began offering Solana staking for institutional clients in March 2025.
• Grayscale’s Solana Trust (GSOL) trades at a 5.3% premium, indicating rising demand.
• Institutional staking yield on Solana averages 6.5%, while Bitcoin remains non-yielding unless tokenized or lent.

Social Media and Community Engagement

• Bitcoin dominates in follower count, with over 6.3 million Twitter/X followers on its main foundation accounts.
• Solana’s community engagement rate is higher, averaging 4.7% interaction per post versus Bitcoin’s 1.8%.
• Solana Discord communities total over 1.8 million active users across ecosystem channels.
• Reddit’s r/Bitcoin reached 4.9 million members, remaining the most subscribed crypto subreddit.
• Solana-themed YouTube content saw a 53% increase in uploads in the first half of 2025.
• Top Solana influencers now drive 8-10 million monthly impressions, fueled by gaming and NFT content.
• Bitcoin’s Google search volume declined by 7% year-over-year, while Solana’s increased by 34%.
• Solana Hackathon livestreams drew over 400,000 viewers globally across platforms in May 2025.
• TikTok creators under the #Solana tag accumulated over 1.1 billion views, surpassing #BitcoinNFT for the first time.
• GitHub watch/star metrics for Solana dev tools increased +38% YoY, showing developer-led growth.

Occupation Breakdown of Crypto Consumers

• Self-employed individuals lead the crypto space, making up 29.3% of users, highlighting strong adoption among freelancers and independent workers.
• Employed professionals follow closely at 28.3%, showing significant interest from those in traditional jobs.
• Students represent 20.7%, indicating a growing presence of young and tech-savvy users.
• Entrepreneurs and investors make up 13.5%, reflecting crypto’s appeal to risk-tolerant and opportunity-seeking individuals.
• Unemployed users account for 6.9%, suggesting limited, but notable, engagement from those outside the workforce.
• Only 1.4% of crypto consumers are retired, showing minimal traction among older age groups.

Regulatory Developments and Legal Standing

• Bitcoin received formal classification as a “digital commodity” by the US CFTC in early 2025.
• Solana was declared a “non-security” under the SEC’s updated Framework for Crypto Assets Guidance.
• The EU’s MiCA regulation, effective Jan 2025, lists both Bitcoin and Solana as compliant under Tier 1 frameworks.
• Bitcoin ETFs were approved in Japan and South Korea, while Solana-based ETPs launched in Switzerland and Singapore.
• IRS now requires detailed staking disclosures; Solana stakers must report yield above $600 annually.
• China continues to restrict Bitcoin trading, though Solana devs operate from Hong Kong SAR under fintech exemptions.
• New York State’s revised BitLicense explicitly names Solana as a “low-risk protocol” due to validator transparency.
• Bitcoin mining was banned in two additional Indian states in 2025 due to energy strain during heat waves.
• Solana was added to the UK FCA’s whitelist, enabling retail promotion under the new financial promotions regime.
• Canada’s OSC approved Solana-focused retail funds, allowing exposure inside TFSA/RRSP accounts.

Price Volatility and Historical Performance

• Bitcoin’s average annualized volatility in 2025 dropped to 41%.
• Solana’s volatility remains higher at 62%, but it has declined from 87% in 2022.
• Bitcoin reached an all-time high of $89,400 in April 2025, a 23% increase YoY.
• Solana peaked at $218 in June 2025, marking a +62% increase from its 2024 high.
• Bitcoin’s drawdown from its ATH in July 2025 was -7.8%, while Solana’s was -13.2%.
• 30-day correlation between Bitcoin and Solana fluctuated between 0.59 to 0.74, indicating moderate alignment.
• Solana had 11 green months out of the past 15, compared to Bitcoin’s 9 in the same span.
• Bitcoin’s realized cap crossed $525 billion, while Solana’s crossed $38 billion, a significant gap, but narrowing.
• Solana-based options volume on Aevo and Zeta increased +48% in Q2, showing growing trader interest.
• Bitcoin dominance metric dropped below 50% for the first time since 2021, due to altcoin performance.

Recent Developments

• Solana launched Firedancer testnet v2, with expected mainnet deployment in Q3 2025 to increase validator diversity.
• Bitcoin Core 26.0 introduced Schnorr signature refinements and experimental Drivechains, sparking mixed reactions.
• Solana integrated zk compression for scalable NFTs, allowing on-chain gaming at 80% less cost.
• Ark Invest rebalanced its fund, reducing Bitcoin from 60% to 48% to increase Solana and Ethereum weight.
• Bitcoin’s halving in April 2024 reduced miner rewards to 3.125 BTC, affecting profitability and price projections.
• Solana Mobile Saga 2 launched in May, selling 160,000 units in Q2, enhancing mobile dApp adoption.
• Bitcoin’s transaction fees briefly surpassed block rewards in May, driven by high Ordinals traffic.
• Solana validator expansion program added 1,100 new validators, improving decentralization metrics.
• USDC adoption on Solana surpassed $3.8 billion in circulating supply, pushing it past Ethereum for stablecoin tx count.
• Bitcoin Layer 2 projects like Ark and Botanix gained traction, with total TVL exceeding $580 million.

Conclusion

Bitcoin and Solana have each carved out clear roles in the blockchain ecosystem. Bitcoin offers unmatched security, decentralization, and institutional backing, while Solana provides speed, scalability, and lower costs for next-gen applications.

In 2025, the decision between them isn’t binary; Bitcoin is the foundation, and Solana is the frontier. Whether you’re looking to hedge, build, or speculate, understanding their key differences is essential. The numbers don’t lie, and in crypto, data is the real compass.