HostWETH vs USDC.E — price, size and safety, side by side
WETH (Ethereum) vs USDC.E (Gnosis) — 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 USDC.E — normalized performance, 2026-10-09 to 2026-10-17T03:15:24
| WETH | USDC.E | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $2.42K | $0.9979 |
| Market cap | $5.41B | $9.84M |
| 24h volume | $462.86M DEX | $154.06K DEX |
| Liquidity | $902.53M | $3.18M |
| FDV | $5.39B | $9.86M |
| Holders | 3,680,746 | 7,909 |
| Age (days) | 1,727 | 521 |
| Safety grade | A | B |
Where they differ
- WETH measures ~549× the market cap of USDC.E
- WETH measures ~284× the liquidity of USDC.E
- WETH measures ~3,004× the 24h volume of USDC.E
- WETH measures ~465× the holder count of USDC.E
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.
USDC.E
One detail on USDC.E didn't fully resolve in the 2026-10-09 snapshot: its contract controls. So rather than assume anything either way, it's worth a direct check, and the scanner above reads it live in a couple of seconds before you trade.
Market-wise, USDC.E carries $3.18M of on-chain liquidity, 7,909 wallets holding and an established record at 521 days as of 2026-10-09. Against roughly $9.84M in market cap, the $3.18M of liquidity is genuinely healthy: deep enough that ordinary trades clear cleanly, which is exactly what you want to see. A 7,909-holder base is a fair start, but distribution matters more than the count — check how much sits in the largest wallets before leaning on it. On concentration, the deployer wallet holds just <0.01% of USDC.E as of 2026-10-09, so the person who launched it isn't sitting on a dominant share.
FAQ
Which is bigger, WETH or USDC.E?
By tracked market cap: WETH (Ethereum) measures $5.41B and USDC.E (Gnosis) measures $9.84M — dated snapshots, not a live feed.
Which is safer, WETH or USDC.E?
On the contract checks we publish: WETH (Ethereum) grades A and USDC.E (Gnosis) grades B. A grade is a structural check on the contract, not a promise about the asset.
How have WETH and USDC.E performed over the shared window?
Between 2026-10-09 and 2026-10-17T03:15:24, the measured snapshots show WETH at −2.77% and USDC.E at −0.22%.
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, 2026-10-09→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.