Ethereum, one of the world’s most popular cryptocurrencies, has been outperformed in terms of yearly growth by OldSchool RuneScape coal.
Spotted by the official X account of a digital currency trading platform Arkham, comparative growth between the long-lasting and popular decentralised currency Ethereum and OSRS’ beautiful black gold, coal, shows the latter coming out on top between May 2025 and May 2026.
The resources used to compare the value of these digital goods are Coin Market Cap (where the price of cryptocurrency is tracked) and the Old School RuneScape wikipedia’s grand exchange tracker (where the value of in-game goods is tracked). Between early May, Ethereum’s value increased by approximately 31.84 percent, while OSRS coal grew by around 42.65 percent.
Aside from being an interesting point of comparison, and to some, perhaps, a comical jab at cryptocurrency in general, it does raise an interesting question: why has the price of coal grown so much?
As any RuneScape player will know, coal is at the heart of the smithing grind for almost every type of metal above iron. You need heaps of the stuff, and there’s an almost constant hunger for coal from players power-leveling in the blast furnace mini-game or just making standard armour upgrades. As such, a market for coal tends to be ever present in OSRS for those not willing to grab a pickaxe and mine it themselves.
As for the growth, it’s worth noting Old School RuneScape has itself grown in popularity of late. In fact, with the release of the latest limited-time Leagues game mode, it nearly breached its all-time peak player count. More players means more demand for coal!
You can play a fun hypothetical game here. While in theory someone could have invested money into Old School RuneScape through the purchase of bonds (microtransaction items that can be either sold or redeemed for a premium membership), actually getting the money out of Old School RuneScape would prove challenging. After all, selling gold goes against the game’s terms of service.
Ethereum you can actively buy and sell, though cryptocurrency has garnered a reputation for being a tad… tumultuous. Plus, if you somehow forgot the encryption key for your crypto wallet, that money would just be gone, so each has its quirks. At least with coal you can make a slick Rune platebody.
