Coal in Old School RuneScape has, in theory, outperformed cryptocurrency Ethereum this year

We're all pretty aware that crypto probably isn't, erm, what you'd call a safe investment for the future.

Especially since, as of earlier this year, it's apparently in a "collateral death spiral" .

Which doesn't sound great.

But if you made a different bet—say, by purchasing Old School RuneScape bonds, converting them into gp, and then ruthlessly violating the terms of service to peddle that gold to players for real cash, you would've outperformed one of the biggest cryptocurrencies , Ethereum, this year.

To be clear, I'm not saying you should've done that.

But hypothetically if you did, and you were able to find a buyer that'd match the money you put into those bonds to buy coal 1:1, it is a statistical fact you would've made more moolah.

That's per X account Arkham , which tracks all sort of cryptocurrency trading stuff (thanks, Eurogamer ).

According to the graphs shown below, Coal grew around 40 percent, whereas Ethereum only grew in the low 30s.

Ethereum, of course, being one of the main currencies that was part of the crypto coldrush circa 2021 .

If you bought Coal on Runescape 1 year ago you outperformed Ethereum pic.twitter.com/oBrRgND1ET May 4, 2026
And coal, of course, being… coal.

It can be used to smelt a variety of bars in OSRS, giving it a constant, reliable use that would be a heck of a lot more stable than a speculative, decentralised currency.

As one commenter on the thread notes: "Why is an MMO economy based on middle ages weaponry etc more fair and balanced then the one we designed to imprison ourselves." Oof.

Most assumptions that spawn from that line of thinking on X (presumably from a bunch of crypto investors who don't play videogames) also assume that RuneScape is an economy of peasants and serfs, which isn't how MMOs work.

If anything, it's a little more like the modern age—players carve out their niches, and if they get in early, they hit it big.

Sometimes MMO economies spin out of control and their designers have to grapple with inflation , sometimes their economies are so intricate that, in the case of EVE online, they hire actual bankers to manage them .

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Point being, nobody's tilling the field in service to their liege lord.

If someone did somehow manage to make more money off coal than Ethereum this year, then they did so with the same entrepreneurial go-getter spirit as that guy who ate over 500,000 trouts to manipulate the fish market.

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Harvey's history with games started when he first begged his parents for a World of Warcraft subscription aged 12, though he's since been cursed with Final Fantasy 14-brain and a huge crush on G'raha Tia.

He made his start as a freelancer, writing for websites like Techradar, The Escapist, Dicebreaker, The Gamer, Into the Spine—and of course, PC Gamer.

He'll sink his teeth into anything that looks interesting, though he has a soft spot for RPGs, soulslikes, roguelikes, deckbuilders, MMOs, and weird indie titles.

He also plays a shelf load of TTRPGs in his offline time.

Don't ask him what his favourite system is, he has too many.

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