Ethereum priceEthereum price

View the historical Ethereum price by day, week, month or year. The table shows the open and close, daily trading volume and percentage price change versus the previous period.

The Ethereum network was launched in 2015, when the Genesis block was mined. That's the very first block of a new blockchain, on which the rest is then built. Ether is the associated coin. The names Ethereum and ether are often confused. If you read 'ether' in this article, it refers to the coin.

But what is actually the difference between Ethereum and bitcoin?
Bitcoin was designed as a peer-to-peer payment network, where security and decentralisation matter most. Bitcoin is also an alternative to the existing financial system of central banks that can print money almost without limit.

Ethereum was not designed as a payment system, but as a platform on which decentralised applications can be launched. In that way the network could function as a 3.0 version of the internet that we all use today. Another use case associated with Ethereum is smart contracts. Smart contracts are programmed contracts that execute automatically as soon as the contract conditions are met. The possibilities this offers are practically endless, and a lot is therefore expected of Ethereum in the years to come.

Because ether is the token used on the Ethereum network, demand for ethers will rise as the network becomes more popular. And rising demand generally leads to a higher price.

Ether has risen significantly over the years. Did you invest from the very start? Then you got lucky! Below are a few milestones of ether:

• 2014: On 22 July, ether was introduced through a crowd sale. One of the founders is the wonder kid Vitalik Buterin. The introduction price was €0.26.
• 2016: On 12 May, the total market value of ether passed one billion dollars, around €837 million.
  
  On 13 June, €46 million worth of ether was stolen from The DAO, one of the first major projects on the Ethereum network. The shock was significant and ether lost almost a third of its value.
• 2017: On 5 May, almost two years after launch, ether passed the $100 mark (€84). An increase of more than 32,000%.
• 2018: On 13 January, ether reached its 2018 high of €1,053. But the bear market that followed hit ether hard. By December the counter stood at just €70.80.
• 2019: The following year, ether shot up to a high of €312 on 26 June.
• 2020: The corona crisis hit ether hard, and on 13 March the price dropped to €80.
• 2021: Late March turned out to be the best entry date for late investors. Ether shot through €1,500 and kept rising. Add more than double on top of that! On 12 May 2021, Ethereum reached a nice peak of €3,580. Ether then reached a high of €4,127 on 11 December.
• 2022: Ethereum dropped back towards €1,000. This was mainly due to major shocks in the market, such as the implosion of Terra Luna and the FTX bankruptcy. That same year also saw The Merge, when Ethereum switched from Proof-of-Work to Proof-of-Stake. Despite this important development, the price moved between roughly €1,100 and €1,800 for a long time.
• 2024: At the start of 2024, sentiment in the market changed. After the approval of the Bitcoin ETF in January, the SEC also gave the green light for the first Ethereum ETFs in May. This brought a new inflow of institutional money. The expectation of this approval had already pushed the price up to around €3,500 earlier on. Towards the end of the year it climbed further, above €3,700.
• 2025: 2025 started turbulently for Ethereum. Due to macroeconomic headwinds, including the impact of Trump tariffs, and outflows from Ethereum ETFs, the price dropped to around €1,400. Later in the year a recovery followed, partly thanks to growing adoption of tokenisation and the rise of Layer-2 solutions like Arbitrum and Optimism. In July, Ethereum reached a new peak of around €4,080. In the months that followed, volatility increased due to geopolitical tensions and economic uncertainty. The price fell from around €4,000 in July to roughly €2,500 by year-end — a sharp drop in a short space of time.
• 2026: At the start of 2026, the downward pressure continued. In February, Ethereum dropped to around €1,550. Factors such as rising tensions between the US and Iran, climbing energy prices and persistent inflation played a role. In March a slight recovery followed, with the price hovering around €1,900 by the end of the month.

Unfortunately, we can't predict the future. The Ethereum price is highly volatile, just like other cryptocurrencies. A rise or fall of several percent in a day is not unusual. The price often moves in line with bitcoin and the wider crypto market.

Trust also influences the price. Positive news about the Ethereum network — such as growing adoption by companies, developers or financial parties — is often welcomed by the market. That can boost demand for ETH and lift the price. The reverse holds too: negative news, stricter regulation or uncertainty can quickly put the price under pressure.

With Ethereum, the supply of ETH also plays a role. Part of the network fees is automatically burned, removing that ETH from circulation. The more transactions on the network, the more ETH can be burned.

On top of that, users can lock up ETH through staking to help secure the network. That ETH remains the owner's, but is temporarily harder to sell. This too can reduce the supply available on the market.

The Ethereum network also plays a key role in DeFi, or decentralised finance. Think of decentralised exchanges, lending crypto to earn yield, or using crypto as collateral to borrow other digital assets. Because ETH is involved in many of these activities, growing DeFi adoption can support demand for ETH.

In short: the ETH price reacts to many different factors. Market sentiment, regulation, interest-rate movements, staking and on-network activity all play a part. That makes Ethereum volatile, but also dynamic.