Ethereum Price History
The full annual price history of Ethereum, from its 2015 launch under $1 to an all-time high near $4,950, with the upgrades, booms, and crashes behind every major move.
Ethereum launched in July 2015 and grew into the leading smart-contract platform, reaching an all-time high near $4,952 in August 2025. This page tracks its annual average price for every year since launch, using the mean of daily closing prices. Click any year for that year's full breakdown.
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Ethereum Price by Year (2015 to 2025)
Annual average of daily closing prices in USD. Click any year for that year's full breakdown.
| Year | Avg Price (USD) | YoY Change | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2010s: Launch, ICO Boom & Crypto Winter | ||||
| 2015 Ethereum mainnet (Frontier) launched July 30, 2015; ETH listed on Kraken Aug 7 at $2.77, quickly fell to ~$0.68 and drifted below $1, closing the year near $0.93. | $0.90 | n/a | ||
| 2016 The DAO peaked near $21 (mid-June); DAO hack (June 17) drained ~3.6M ETH and roughly halved the price to ~$11; July hard fork split off Ethereum Classic; year-end ~$8. | $9.80 | +988.9% | ||
| 2017 ICO boom and ERC-20 token mania; ETH rose from ~$8 in January to a year-end ~$750 (peaking near $1,400 in early January 2018). | $222.00 | +2165.3% | ||
| 2018 Crypto winter / bear market; ETH fell from a ~$1,400 January peak to about $133 by December. | $481.00 | +116.7% | ||
| 2019 Sideways bear-market consolidation; ETH ranged roughly $100-360, ending near $130. | $181.00 | -62.4% | ||
| 2020s: DeFi, The Merge & the ETF Era | ||||
| 2020 DeFi Summer drove ETH gas demand; ETH2 Beacon Chain went live Dec 1, 2020; price climbed from ~$130 to a year-end ~$730. | $308.00 | +70.2% | ||
| 2021 NFT/DeFi bull run; London hard fork (EIP-1559) in August; all-time high near $4,800-4,890 in November 2021. | $2,779.00 | +802.3% | ||
| 2022 The Merge to proof-of-stake completed Sept 15, 2022, amid a broad bear market (Terra/LUNA, Celsius, FTX collapses); ETH ended near $1,195-1,215. | $1,982.00 | -28.7% | ||
| 2023 Recovery year; Shanghai/Shapella upgrade (April) enabled staked-ETH withdrawals; range-bound roughly $1,200-2,400. | $1,795.00 | -9.4% | ||
| 2024 US spot Ethereum ETFs launched (July 2024); Dencun upgrade (March) lowered L2 fees; ETH ranged roughly $2,200-4,100. | $3,048.00 | +69.8% | ||
| 2025 Pectra upgrade; heavy institutional inflows; new all-time high ~$4,952 on Aug 24, 2025, followed by a sharp sell-off into year-end. | $3,066.00 | +0.6% | ||
Ethereum Through the Cycles
Ethereum launched on July 30, 2015, conceived by Vitalik Buterin and a team of co-founders as a programmable blockchain. Unlike Bitcoin, which is primarily a store of value, Ethereum runs smart contracts, the self-executing code that powers decentralized finance, NFTs, stablecoins, and thousands of other applications. Its native coin, ether (ETH), pays for computation on the network.
ETH traded below $1 for much of its first year. In 2016 the collapse of a high-profile project called The DAO, after a hacker drained roughly 3.6 million ETH, split the community and produced a hard fork that created Ethereum Classic. The 2017 ICO boom then made Ethereum the platform of choice for token launches, driving ETH from about $8 to a peak near $1,400 in early January 2018 before the crypto winter cut it to roughly $130.
The next cycle was driven by Ethereum's own ecosystem. DeFi Summer in 2020 and the NFT boom of 2021 sent enormous demand through the network, and ETH reached an all-time high near $4,800 in November 2021. In September 2022, Ethereum completed the Merge, switching from energy-intensive proof-of-work mining to proof-of-stake, one of the most significant upgrades in crypto history, even as a broad bear market pulled the price toward $1,200.
Recovery came with the 2023 Shapella upgrade, which let stakers withdraw their ETH, and accelerated after US regulators approved spot Ethereum ETFs in July 2024. Renewed institutional inflows and the 2025 Pectra upgrade carried ETH to a new record around $4,952 in August 2025, narrowly above its 2021 peak, before a sharp sell-off into year-end.
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Annual figures are the mean of daily closing prices in US dollars, compiled by MetalCharts from multiple exchange feeds and cross-checked against public reference data. They are for research and may differ slightly from figures published elsewhere.