Ethereum price chart: historic data
Since its inception in 2015, Ethereum has experienced significant price swings. During the first five years of its existence, the platform has made massive progress, and is currently running about 2,000 dApps. As of today, the market cap of its native crypto Ether is $420bn.
2013/2014
Developer Vitalik Buterin and his team present the idea of Ethereum to the public. They manage to raise $18 million for its development.
2015
The Ethereum network launches on July 30, 2015, initially called Frontier. Ether’s first recorded price was $2.77 on August 7, 2015, when the crypto was added to the Kraken exchange.
2016
Ether’s price quickly rises after the launch of a more stable version of the protocol (Homestead). As a result, the cryptocurrency reached a serious milestone of $15 per coin for the first time. The cryptocurrency climbs even higher to $21 on the success of the DAO project, a pioneer of the coming ICO era. That same year, Ethereum split into two parts, Ethereum Classic and Ethereum, after a controversial hard fork caused by an attack on DAO.
2017
Ethereum soars to $95 per coin as the cryptocurrency's popularity grows among investors and dApps developers. The ICO hype also contributes to increased demand for ETH, and the price eventually climbs to $400. ETH’s price jumps further to $800 after the Byzantium network upgrade.
2018
ETH reached its highest level to date, trading at around $1,400. The price of the crypto dropped back down to $85 soon after the ICO rush came to an end.
2019
DeFi emerges as the largest industry within the Ethereum network. MakerDAO raises ETH 1.86 million in funding. The network goes through the Constantinople hard fork in February, and an eighth update, called Istanbul, is activated.
2020
The network is upgraded to Ethereum 2.0 to address scalability and transition to a new blockchain scheme (stacking). Activity in the DeFi sector increases once more. Value transferred via DeFi applications reaches a record $4.9bn in Q2.
2021
Ether climbs to a new all-time high of $4,165. Total mining revenue reaches record highs of $1.3bn in February, with the coin also reaching a billion total transactions during the same month. The DeFi space continues to mature and the demand for NFTs, most of which exist on the Ethereum blockchain, has further increased interest in the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency.
Invest in Ethereum: FAQ
How does Ethereum work and what makes it unique?
Ethereum revolutionised the concept of a blockchain platform for smart contracts. Smart contracts, representing programs which automatically execute an agreement between parties, were created to eliminate the necessity for trusted intermediaries between contractors. These promised to cut the cost of transactions and increase their reliability.
According to Ethereum co-founder Gavin Wood, Ethereum's blockchain was designed as “one computer for the entire planet” with the aim to make any program censorship-resistant, less prone to fraud and more robust by running on a globally distributed network of public nodes.
Besides smart contracts, Ethereum’s network is capable of hosting other cryptocurrencies through its ERC-20 compatibility standard. Over 280,000 ETC-20-compliant tokens were launched in 2020, including USDT, BNB and LINK.
How many Ethereum coins are there in circulation?
By the end of summer 2020, there were almost 112 million Ethers in circulation, 72 of which were issued along with Ethereum’s first-ever Genesis block.
Of the initial 72 million, 60 were poured into the crowdsale that fuelled the project, while the remaining 12 were allocated towards Ethereum’s development.
The rest of the coins went out as rewards for miners. In 2015, the reward was 5 ETH per block. It then dropped to 3 ETH in 2017 and 2 ETH by 2019. It takes about 13-15 seconds to mine a block of Ethereum, and unlike Bitcoin, the total supply of Ethereum is not limited.
Why will Ethereum succeed?
Despite some drastic price swings throughout its history, analysts believe that Ethereum is on a path to ultimate success. Although there’s never a definite answer to “should I invest in Ethereum”, you can track the crypto’s performance in real time and follow experts’ opinions and the latest Ethereum price predictions.
According to WalletInvestor’s ETH price forecast for 2020-2025, Ether's price will rise to highs of $4,200 by the end of 2021, shooting up to $15,700 in 2025. CoinSwitch gives an even more bullish prediction, expecting Ethereum to reach a price of $2,480 by 2022 and $3,844 by 2025.
Who accepts Ether as payment?
Although Ether isn’t as widespread as Bitcoin, many companies are already accepting it as a means of payment.
Two of the world’s major payment systems – PayPal and Visa – recently announced that they would allow the use of cryptocurrency (including Ether) on their platforms.
