Compare Crypto Metrics: Risk, Returns, and Market Context

Why price-only crypto comparisons are incomplete

Open a coin directory and compare BTC with ETH. You usually get a raw price chart, market cap, 24h volume, and supply fields. Those are useful, but they do not answer the portfolio question: which asset delivered better return per unit of risk over the same window?

Sharpe's coin-compare tool focuses on that risk-and-return layer. It compares selected crypto, stock, index, and commodity assets against a benchmark using the same historical-price window, then generates a tearsheet with normalized performance, drawdowns, volatility, Sharpe ratio, Sortino ratio, beta, alpha, and correlation.

For on-chain, derivatives, and attention context, use the dedicated Sharpe products alongside Coin Compare: Futures for positioning, Mindshare for attention, Narratives for sector context, and Correlation for broader pairwise relationships.

What Coin Compare actually shows

The report starts with a normalized performance chart. Every selected asset is rebased to the same starting value, so BTC, ETH, SOL, Apple, gold, and the S&P 500 can be compared without raw price scale getting in the way.

The generated tearsheet includes:

• Total return and CAGR
• Best day, worst day, and win rate
• Annualized volatility, maximum drawdown, VaR, CVaR, and ulcer index
• Sharpe, Sortino, Calmar, information ratio, and Treynor ratio
• Beta, alpha, R-squared, and correlation to the selected benchmark
• Rolling Sharpe, rolling Sortino, rolling volatility, and rolling beta
• Worst drawdown periods, yearly returns, return histograms, and monthly heatmaps

This is enough to answer questions like "Did SOL outperform ETH only because it took more risk?", "Did ETH add diversification versus Nasdaq?", and "Did BTC deliver better drawdown-adjusted returns than gold?"

Three useful comparison patterns

1. SOL vs ETH. Both are smart-contract platforms, but their risk profiles are different. A normalized chart shows relative performance, while volatility, max drawdown, beta, and Sharpe show whether the outperformance compensated for the additional risk.

2. BTC vs gold. The store-of-value debate is not just about market cap. Coin Compare can show whether BTC's return premium over gold came with a much larger drawdown and volatility burden. For market-cap parity math, use the Market Cap calculator.

3. Memecoin vs memecoin. WIF vs PEPE or DOGE vs SHIB can be compared on actual realized return behavior: drawdown depth, volatility, tail ratio, and monthly heatmaps. Pair that with Mindshare when the trade thesis depends on attention.

TradFi peer comparisons

The crypto-vs-TradFi pages put high-intent pairs into a stable URL:

• /coin-compare/tradfi/bitcoin-vs-gold
• /coin-compare/tradfi/ethereum-vs-apple
• /coin-compare/tradfi/bitcoin-vs-sp500

These pages show current market-cap ratio and flip-multiple context when the assets are available in Sharpe's Market Cap cache. Use Correlation when you need rolling co-movement instead of scale comparison.

Programmatic compare URLs

Sharpe maintains stable pair pages for common crypto comparisons:

• /coin-compare/bitcoin-vs-ethereum
• /coin-compare/solana-vs-ethereum
• /coin-compare/bitcoin-vs-solana
• /coin-compare/pepe-vs-dogwifhat

Each pair page preloads one asset against the other as the benchmark, so the tearsheet is ready to generate without rebuilding the comparison by hand.

How to use compare in a research workflow

1. Position sizing. If one asset wins on total return but loses on Sharpe, max drawdown, and Sortino, it may need a smaller allocation than the raw return chart implies.

2. Pair-trade screening. If two assets have similar long-run correlation but one has recently diverged in drawdown, volatility, or rolling beta, it may deserve a closer look in the Correlation matrix.

3. Portfolio construction. Run your largest holdings against BTC, ETH, the S&P 500, Nasdaq, or gold. If everything behaves like the same benchmark, you have duplicate exposure rather than diversification.

Common mistakes

Comparing only raw prices. Price levels are arbitrary across assets. Normalized returns reveal relative performance; risk metrics reveal whether that performance was efficient.

Treating Sharpe as benchmark-relative. In Coin Compare, Sharpe and Sortino are calculated versus the risk-free rate. Benchmark-relative metrics are shown separately through beta, alpha, information ratio, Treynor, R-squared, and correlation.

Using one metric as a verdict. A high CAGR with an extreme drawdown can be harder to hold than a lower-return asset with steadier behavior. Read return, risk, and benchmark-relative sections together.

Where to go from here

For a risk-and-return tearsheet, use /coin-compare. For market cap and if-X-had-Y valuation math, use /market-cap. For on-chain and attention confirmation, pair the report with Futures, Mindshare, Narratives, and Correlation.