Ethereum price history: every year since 2015
ETH's yearly open, close, high and low since trading began in 2015, alongside the upgrades and events that shaped each year.
ETH first traded in August 2015 at around $1.20. It closed 2017 at $742.26, 2021 at $3,687, 2024 at $3,332 and 2025 at $2,968. Its highest daily close in this data is $4,831, on August 22, 2025. It fell more than 80% in 2018 and 68% in 2022.
Ethereum (ETH) price by year, 2015 to 2025
| Year | Open | Close | High (daily close) | Low (daily close) | Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | $3,332 | $2,968 | $4,831 | $1,471 | −10.9% |
| 2024 | $2,279 | $3,332 | $4,073 | $2,207 | +46.2% |
| 2023 | $1,195 | $2,279 | $2,379 | $1,200 | +90.7% |
| 2022 | $3,687 | $1,195 | $3,832 | $992.79 | −67.6% |
| 2021 | $739.03 | $3,687 | $4,811 | $730.91 | +399% |
| 2020 | $128.51 | $739.03 | $751.21 | $110.33 | +475% |
| 2019 | $130.79 | $128.51 | $334.04 | $103.30 | −1.7% |
| 2018 | $742.26 | $130.79 | $1,380 | $82.83 | −82.4% |
| 2017 | $8.13 | $742.26 | $823.85 | $8.18 | +9,034% |
| 2016 | $0.9488 | $8.13 | $20.73 | $0.9204 | +756% |
| 2015 | $1.20* | $0.9488 | $1.88 | $0.42 | −20.9% |
*2015 starts on August 8, 2015, the first day in the data set. Daily closing prices at 00:00 UTC from Coin Metrics.
ETH price chart since 2015
What happened each year
| Year | Key events |
|---|---|
| 2015 | July 30: Ethereum launches (Frontier). Trading starts in August; prices in the first months are thin and vary a lot between exchanges. |
| 2016 | June: The DAO, a large smart-contract fund, is hacked. On July 20 a hard fork returns the funds, and the original chain carries on as Ethereum Classic. |
| 2017 | The ICO boom: thousands of new tokens are sold for ETH, and the price rises about 90-fold. |
| 2018 | The bubble deflates: after a January peak, ETH falls about 82% over the year. |
| 2019 | The Constantinople (February) and Istanbul (December) upgrades go live. The price ends almost where it started. |
| 2020 | "DeFi summer" brings lending and trading apps to life. December 1: the Beacon Chain launches, the first step toward proof of stake. |
| 2021 | August 5: the London upgrade starts burning part of every fee (EIP-1559). NFTs boom, and ETH reaches a record near $4,800 in November. |
| 2022 | September 15: the Merge moves Ethereum to proof of stake. The Terra and FTX collapses drag the price down about 68%. |
| 2023 | April 12: the Shapella upgrade lets stakers withdraw their ETH for the first time. |
| 2024 | March 13: the Dencun upgrade cuts fees on layer 2 networks. July 23: US spot ether ETFs start trading. |
| 2025 | February 21: about $1.5 billion in ETH is stolen from the Bybit exchange. May 7: the Pectra upgrade goes live. ETH sets a new record in late August, then ends the year about 11% lower. December 3: the Fusaka upgrade goes live. |
What the history shows
- Bigger swings than bitcoin. ETH rose about 90-fold in 2017, then fell 82% in 2018 and 68% in 2022. Its yearly moves have usually been larger than bitcoin's in both directions.
- Upgrades change the network, not the price path. Big upgrades like the Merge (2022) changed how Ethereum works and how much new ETH is issued. The price over the following months was driven mostly by the wider market.
- The 2021 record held for years. ETH's November 2021 high wasn't passed until August 2025, almost four years later.
- Past moves don't predict future ones. These are historical facts, not a forecast.
Method and sources
Where the numbers come from. Every ETH price in the main table is Coin Metrics' daily US dollar reference price (its free "PriceUSD" series), taken at 00:00 UTC at the end of each day and averaged across exchanges. Open is the price at the end of December 31 of the year before (the moment the year starts), close is the price at the end of December 31, and high and low are the highest and lowest of those daily closing prices. Intraday spikes are higher and dips lower than daily closes, so we list a second source's intraday high and low separately. We cross-checked every year against at least one other data set (see the cross-check table); where they differ, the main table shows Coin Metrics.
Cross-check: Coin Metrics vs. Coinlore
| Year | Close (Coin Metrics) | Close (Coinlore) | Gap | Intraday high (Coinlore) | Intraday low (Coinlore) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | $2,968 | $2,971 | 0.1% | $4,952 | $1,396 |
| 2024 | $3,332 | $3,340 | 0.2% | $4,094 | $2,155 |
| 2023 | $2,279 | $2,281 | 0.1% | $2,441 | $1,194 |
| 2022 | $1,195 | $1,196 | 0.1% | $3,883 | $1,008 |
| 2021 | $3,687 | $3,679 | 0.2% | $4,858 | $717.53 |
| 2020 | $739.03 | $737.11 | 0.3% | $753.89 | $89.35 |
| 2019 | $128.51 | $130.20 | 1.3% | $365.07 | $102.39 |
| 2018 | $130.79 | $133.37 | 2.0% | $1,433 | $82.83 |
| 2017 | $742.26 | $756.73 | 2.0% | $881.94 | $7.98 |
| 2016 | $8.13 | $7.97 | 1.9% | $21.52 | $0.9298 |
| 2015 | $0.9488 | $0.9335 | 1.6% | $3.54 | $0.4209 |
Coinlore figures copied on November 4, 2026. In 2015, ETH traded on very few exchanges and prices varied widely; Coinlore's first price ($2.83, on the first day of trading) is much higher than Coin Metrics' first daily close, so treat 2015 as approximate.
See the Ethereum price today, or what an amount invested on a past date would be worth now with the crypto investment calculator.
Frequently asked questions
What was ETH's first price?
ETH started trading in August 2015. Coin Metrics' first daily close, on August 8, 2015, was $1.20. Prices on the very first day varied between exchanges, from under $1 to about $3.
What is Ethereum's highest price?
Its highest daily close in this data is $4,831 on August 22, 2025. The intraday peak was about $4,952 per Coinlore. A later record would show on the live ETH price page.
What was the price of Ethereum at the end of 2021?
About $3,687, according to Coin Metrics' close for December 31, 2021.
Did the Merge make ETH's price go up?
Not in any simple way. The Merge took place on September 15, 2022, in the middle of a bear market, and ETH ended 2022 at $1,195, down 67.6% for the year.
Where to next
Sources
- Coin Metrics free daily network data, PriceUSD (GitHub archive, CC BY-NC 4.0)
- Ethereum historical data and yearly returns (Coinlore)
- Ethereum forks and upgrades (ethereum.org)
- The DAO (Wikipedia)
- Bybit hack (FBI public service announcement, February 2025)
Written for beginners and checked against the sources listed. Last reviewed November 4, 2026. This page is educational and is not financial, tax or legal advice. How we write and check pages.