Bitcoin to oil: how much crude, diesel or gasoline does 1 BTC buy?
One bitcoin currently buys roughly 665 barrels (105,779 litres) of Brent crude. The ratio is recomputed every day from the BTC-USD price (CoinGecko) and the Brent spot price per barrel, which FRED republishes from the US Energy Information Administration. A barrel is 42 US gallons, or about 159 litres.
On the homepage the Oil tab switches between three fuels — Brent crude, US diesel and US gasoline, the last two at the EIA's weekly average pump price — and draws what you could buy at true size: the fuel in a mid-size car's tank, a yard of 55-gallon drums, the hold of a two-million-barrel supertanker, and past ten tankers a field of pump jacks standing for Prudhoe Bay, North America's largest oil field.
See it at scale. Open the live visualisation— switch between Brent crude, US diesel and US gasoline and see the volume at true size: a car's fuel tank, a yard of 55-gallon drums, a supertanker's hold, then a field of pump jacks, with a slider scrubbing from 1 sat to 21 M BTC.
About oil and bitcoin
Crude and pump fuel are different kinds of price. Brent is a wholesale spot price for unrefined oil at sea; a gallon of gasoline or diesel at a US pump carries refining, distribution, retail margin and tax on top. So the same bitcoin buys roughly three times as many litres of crude as of gasoline, and the tab says which kind of price each fuel uses.
Oil is also a useful yardstick for the scale of bitcoin itself. The world uses about 104 million barrels a day (IEA, 2025); all 21 million bitcoin buy roughly as much crude as Prudhoe Bay has produced in nearly fifty years. The Brent series goes back to 2013 in the daily dataset at /data; the weekly pump prices sit alongside it in the site's prices.json.
Frequently asked questions
- How many barrels of oil does 1 bitcoin buy today?
- About 665 barrels (105,779 litres) of Brent crude, from the latest daily BTC-USD price and the Brent spot price per barrel (FRED, DCOILBRENTEU).
- Why does bitcoin buy so much less gasoline than crude?
- Because the gasoline and diesel prices are retail pump prices — the EIA weekly US averages, taxes included — while Brent is a wholesale price for crude before refining, shipping and tax.
- What is the difference between a barrel and a drum?
- A barrel of oil is a unit: 42 US gallons, about 159 litres. The steel drums drawn on the site are the common 55-gallon kind, about 208 litres each.
- How much oil is a supertanker?
- A VLCC (very large crude carrier), about 330 metres long, carries around 2 million barrels; the EIA gives 1.9 to 2.2 million. The site draws its hold cut open, with the oil at its true depth.
- Could all the bitcoin in existence buy an oil field?
- At recent prices, about one Prudhoe Bay: the Alaskan field has produced some 13.2 billion barrels since 1977, and 21 million bitcoin buy a similar volume of crude when one bitcoin is worth around $80,000 and Brent is around $125.
This ratio through history
Each year page summarises what one bitcoin bought at that year's open and close, drawn from the same daily dataset.