Bitcoin and Ethereum are often spoken of as if they belong in the same drawer. They share a few family features. Each uses a blockchain. Each has a native token. Each can be bought, sold, sent, and stored. After that, they begin to part company. Bitcoin was introduced in 2008 as a peer to peer electronic cash system. Its white paper set out a way to move value without a bank in the middle. Ethereum arrived later with a wider brief. It was built to run applications and smart contracts, with ETH used to pay for activity on the network. One was designed first as money. The other was designed as infrastructure.

That difference shapes almost everything that follows. Bitcoin is usually discussed as a scarce digital asset and a system…