Ethereum Price Today

The current real-time Ethereum price is $3,366.22 . ETH price has plummeted by 0.14% in the last day and increased by 8.71% in the last seven days. It’s important to note that the current Ethereum market capitalization is $404,685,677,739. The maximum supply is coins, with a circulating supply of 120,219,581.13. ETH is ranked #2 in terms of market cap.

Ethereum Price History

Since its launch in 2015, Ethereum has experienced significant price surges, making it a top-performing asset in the cryptocurrency space. It has also reserved its spot as #2 in market capitalization behind Bitcoin.

When Ethereum was launched in July 2015, the initial price of Ether (ETH) was approximately USD 0.31. Ethereum's price saw its first major surge in early 2017, climbing from around $10 at the start of the year to over $400 by June. This growth was fueled by the Initial Coin Offering (ICO) boom, where new projects used Ethereum's blockchain to launch their tokens, driving demand for ETH.

By January 2018, Ethereum reached an all-time high of $1,432. However, like the rest of the market, Ethereum also declined in price to below $100 by December 2018. The recovery began in 2020, as the DeFi (Decentralized Finance) movement gained traction, using Ethereum’s blockchain to create decentralized financial applications, further driving up the demand and price of ETH.

Ethereum’s price surged again in 2021, reaching a new all-time high of $4,362 in May. This rise was attributed to the interest in DeFi and NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens), primarily built on the Ethereum blockchain. Today, the current price of Ethereum is $3,366.22 .

What is Ethereum Explained

Ethereum is an open-source, blockchain-based platform enabling developers to build and deploy decentralized applications (dApps). Programmer Vitalik Buterin proposed it in late 2013, and development was crowdfunded in 2014. The network went live on July 30, 2015.

Ethereum's key features include smart contracts, which are self-executing agreements with terms directly written into code, eliminating the need for intermediaries; the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), a decentralized Turing-complete virtual machine that ensures precise execution of smart contracts; decentralized applications (dApps), which operate on a peer-to-peer network to provide transparency, security, and efficiency; and Ether (ETH), the native cryptocurrency used to pay for transaction fees and computational services on the network.

How Ethereum Works In A Nutshell

Ethereum operates through a blockchain, a decentralized ledger that records all transactions across a network of computers. Unlike Bitcoin, which is primarily used as a digital currency, Ethereum’s blockchain is designed to be flexible and adaptable, allowing developers to create a wide range of decentralized applications.

Ethereum's key features include smart contracts, which are self-executing agreements with terms directly written into code, eliminating the need for intermediaries; the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), a decentralized Turing-complete virtual machine that ensures precise execution of smart contracts; decentralized applications (dApps), which operate on a peer-to-peer network to provide transparency, security, and efficiency; and Ether (ETH), the native cryptocurrency used to pay for transaction fees and computational services on the network.

For a full breakdown of what Ethereum is and how it works, read this article.

Ethereum As An Investment

Ethereum is widely perceived as a good long-term investment with strong demand. In particular, completing the Ethereum 2.0 upgrade to a proof-of-stake system is a significant driver for expanding its intrinsic value. This will make the ecosystem more scalable, secure, and environmentally sustainable.

As one of the most popular blockchains for smart contract deployment, the number of decentralized blockchain applications has grown exponentially. This resulted in increased demand for the native cryptocurrency, which rose over 4,500% between March 2021 and May 2021, making Ethereum one of the best-performing assets in the same year. The price has been range-bound since its peak and has a market capitalization of 355 billion at the time of writing.

Competition is a factor that can stagnate the value of the Ethereum network. The Ethereum blockchain must compete with the development of similar Layer-1 blockchains that offer quicker, cheaper, and more efficient transactions. Examples of utility blockchain networks to Ethereum are Solana, Cardano, and Polkadot. Therefore, investors need to be mindful that growing competition for DApps could take market share away from Ethereum. If that occurs, the value of ETH will likely fall.

Management

The Ethereum Foundation, a Swiss nonprofit organization, oversees the development and promotion of Ethereum. Vitalik Buterin remains a key figure in the Ethereum community, continuously contributing to its vision and development. The foundation supports a wide array of projects to ensure the long-term success of the Ethereum ecosystem.