HostWETH vs WBTC — price, size and safety, side by side
WETH (Ethereum) vs WBTC (Ethereum) — every figure is the freshest dated measurement we hold for that token, never a live-feed guess. Prices stamped 2026-10-17 / 2026-10-17.
WETH vs WBTC — normalized performance, 2026-09-08 to 2026-10-17T03:15:24
| WETH | WBTC | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $2.42K | $81.15K |
| Market cap | $5.41B | $9.63B |
| 24h volume | $462.86M DEX | $185.99M DEX |
| Liquidity | $902.53M | $220.70M |
| FDV | $5.39B | $9.63B |
| Holders | 3,680,746 | 197,266 |
| Age (days) | 1,727 | 1,583 |
| Safety grade | A | C |
Where they differ
- WBTC measures ~1.8× the market cap of WETH
- WETH measures ~4.1× the liquidity of WBTC
- WETH measures ~2.5× the 24h volume of WBTC
- WETH measures ~19× the holder count of WBTC
- over the shared window WETH moved −2.19% while WBTC moved +4.24%
What the data says
WETH
WETH is the oldest load-bearing contract in DeFi. Deployed in December 2017 as WETH9, the contract at 0xc02aaa39b223fe8d0a0e5c4f27ead9083c756cc2 does exactly one thing: wrap ETH — which predates the ERC-20 standard and doesn't conform to it — into a token that does, redeemable one-for-one, instantly, by anyone, forever. It has no owner, no admin functions, no upgrade path, and no pause switch. Nearly every DEX trade, lending market, and NFT sale on Ethereum has settled through it at some point; it is less a token than a piece of the chain's plumbing.
That architecture is why the usual checklist comes back almost empty. There is no team to rug, no supply policy to abuse — WETH supply is simply however much ETH is currently deposited in the contract, minted on wrap and burned on unwrap. The failure mode people theorize about (the contract holding less ETH than WETH outstanding) would require a bug that eight-plus years of the highest-value adversarial testing in crypto has not found. HostDeFi's October 9, 2026 snapshot shows roughly $903 million of tracked pool liquidity and $73 million of daily volume on this deployment, and both understate reality — WETH is one side of thousands of pools our sample doesn't enumerate.
WBTC
WBTC is the original wrapped Bitcoin — the ERC-20 that put BTC on Ethereum's DeFi rails in 2019, custodied by BitGo with a mint-and-burn pipeline run through KYC'd merchants. The deployment 0x2260fac5e5542a773aa44fbcfedf7c193bc2c599 is the canonical mint, one of the oldest contract addresses in DeFi; our October 9, 2026 snapshot reads $220.7 million of tracked pool liquidity on this pair set — a slice of a float that spans every major venue.
The honest frame is unchanged since launch: holding WBTC means trusting BitGo's custody — the reserve is attested and the mint pipeline is transparent, but the claim is institutional, not cryptographic. Coinbase's cbBTC arrived as the regulated-competitor answer; the two trade the same BTC exposure with different custodians, and the depth split between them is the market's live verdict on whose custody it prefers.
FAQ
Which is bigger, WETH or WBTC?
By tracked market cap: WETH (Ethereum) measures $5.41B and WBTC (Ethereum) measures $9.63B — dated snapshots, not a live feed.
Which is safer, WETH or WBTC?
On the contract checks we publish: WETH (Ethereum) grades A and WBTC (Ethereum) grades C. A grade is a structural check on the contract, not a promise about the asset.
How have WETH and WBTC performed over the shared window?
Between 2026-09-08 and 2026-10-17T03:15:24, the measured snapshots show WETH at −2.19% and WBTC at +4.24%.
The grade column is the one CMC's compare page cannot print — our grade is computed from the contract itself (mint/freeze authority, liquidity, holder concentration). Changes are measured over the shared window stated on the chart, 2026-09-08→2026-10-17T03:15:24; a token with fewer measured points measures a shorter span inside it.
Figures are dated on-chain snapshots, not a live feed. Safety grades are structural checks — not investment advice. Free · no signup · a HostDeFi product.