How are the two major chains doing in the last period? Is the Bitcoin dominance growing or Ethereum is closing in? Let’s take a look.
Image background generated with Midjoureny
We will be looking at data for:
- Unique wallets
- 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 – June 2023.
Bitcoin has been around since 2009, but Ethereum started with operation in 2015 and from then forward we will be making comparisons.
Number of Unique Wallets Created
Here is the chart for the number of unique wallets on Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Ethereum took the lead in the number of wallets back in January 2018 and it has been increasing the lead ever since.
In January 2018 the number of Bitcoin and Ethereum wallets was just above 20M. Today Bitcoin has 88M wallets and Ethereum 246M. Ethereum is leading in terms of number of wallets.
Note that wallets are free and anonymous on both chains and therefore can be created in bulk and even as spam.
Active Wallets
The above was in terms of wallets created. How about active wallets? How many of those wallets created 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 2022-2023 we get this:
We can see a slow downtrend here for Ethereum, while the numbers for Bitcoin have been quite constant, even with a small uptrend.
Bitcoin is leading and has increased its lead in the last period. Just recently it has come surpassed 800k DAUs and spiked to 900k, and then dropped fast again to 700k where it is now.
On average, in the last period Bitcoin has around 720k daily active wallets, while Ethereum is around 400k 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. On occasion there were close to 700k transactions per day.
When we zoom in 2022-2023 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 slow decline in the number of transactions in the last period, and the two seem to converge towards each other.
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 500k transactions while Ethereum 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$, and have dropped to few dollars at the end of 2022. In 2023 fees on Ethereum increased a bit, reaching 20$ at one point and dropped again to around 5$.
For Bitcoin, we can notice the sharp increase in May 2023. This is due to the NFS and tokens. At one point the fees on the Bitcoin network reached 30$.
In the last period Bitcoin and Ethereum are almost equal in fees, with fees in the range between $3 to $5.
In the long run fees are essential for the chains as they will be the main source for incentives for miners/validators providing infrastructure.
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 74% BTC vs 26% ETH.
The pie chart looks like this:
At the moment Bitcoin is around 545 billions Marketcap while Ethereum is around 196 billions.
Summary
Bitcoin is leading when it comes to active wallets, while Ethereum is in the lead for overall wallets created. The number of transactions is higher on ETH, 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, while they are down on the Ethereum network and now both of the chains have similar fees.
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 74% to 26%.
While these two chains art now totally different in design and function, Bitcoin seems stronger then ever and shows it can do things that Ethereum does as well.
All the best
@dalz