Ethereum Price (ETH)

What is Ethereum?

Ethereum is a decentralized blockchain that runs programs as well as payments. Anyone can send value on it, and anyone can publish code to it, called smart contracts, that runs exactly as written for everyone who uses it. Those programs power stablecoins, decentralized exchanges, lending markets, NFTs and thousands of other applications, which is why Ethereum is often described as a shared, global computer that no single company owns.

Ether (ETH) is the network's native currency. You need ETH to pay for every transaction and every action on Ethereum, and ETH is what validators lock up to secure the network. People often say "Ethereum" when they mean the coin, but strictly speaking Ethereum is the network and ether is the asset. ETH is the second-largest cryptocurrency by market value after Bitcoin.

Ethereum at a glance

How does Ethereum work?

Ethereum keeps one shared record, the blockchain, of every account balance and every program stored on the network. Thousands of independent computers called nodes hold a copy of that record and check every change to it, so no one can quietly rewrite it.

• Accounts: there are two kinds. Regular accounts are controlled by a private key held in a wallet. Contract accounts are controlled by their code. Since the Pectra upgrade in May 2025, regular accounts can also borrow smart-contract features, which lets wallets offer things like batched transactions and letting an app pay the fee for you.
• Transactions: every change to Ethereum starts as a signed transaction: sending ETH, swapping tokens, minting an NFT or calling any other contract. The transaction pays a fee in ETH for the computation it uses.
• The Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM): the EVM is the environment that runs smart contracts. Every node runs the same code with the same inputs and must reach the same result, which is what makes a contract's outcome predictable and verifiable. Many other blockchains copy the EVM so that Ethereum apps and wallets work on them too.
• Blocks and validators: a new block is added every 12 seconds. Instead of miners, Ethereum uses proof of stake: validators lock up ETH as collateral, take turns proposing blocks and vote on which blocks are valid. A validator that breaks the rules can lose part of its stake.

What is Ethereum used for?

Ethereum's main job is to run applications that hold and move value without a company in the middle. The biggest uses today are:

• Stablecoins: dollar-pegged tokens such as USDT and USDC are issued on Ethereum and its layer 2s, and Ethereum is one of the largest networks for stablecoin payments.
• Tokens: most tokens on Ethereum follow the ERC-20 standard, which lets any wallet or exchange handle them the same way. This is how projects issue governance tokens, wrapped assets and tokenized funds.
• Decentralized finance (DeFi): DeFi apps let people trade, lend, borrow and earn interest directly from a wallet. ETH is the main collateral across these protocols.
• NFTs and digital ownership: Ethereum records who owns unique tokens, from digital art and collectibles to tickets and in-game items.
• Tokenized real-world assets: banks and asset managers use Ethereum to issue tokenized versions of funds, bonds and treasuries.
• Organizations and identity: DAOs use smart contracts to vote and manage shared funds, and Ethereum accounts can serve as a login for apps.

ETH itself has a role in all of these. It pays the fees for every action, it is staked to secure the network, and it is the base asset most DeFi markets are built around.

Gas fees: how using Ethereum is paid for

Every action on Ethereum uses computation, measured in units of gas. A simple ETH transfer uses 21,000 gas; a complex DeFi trade uses much more. You pay for gas in ETH, and the price of each unit is quoted in gwei, one billionth of an ETH.

Since the London upgrade in August 2021 (EIP-1559), each fee has two parts:

1. Base fee: set automatically by the network and burned, meaning those ETH are destroyed. It rises when blocks are full and falls when they are not.
2. Priority fee (tip): an optional extra paid to the validator to have the transaction included sooner.

Fees go up when many people want to use the network at the same time, such as during a popular token launch or a sharp market move. They have been low for most of 2025 and 2026 because so much activity has moved to layer 2 networks and the network's capacity has been raised several times. Your wallet shows the fee before you confirm. Read more in our guide to Ethereum gas and fees.

ETH supply: is there a maximum?

No. Unlike Bitcoin's fixed 21 million, ETH has no hard cap. About 122 million ETH exist as of October 2026, and the live circulating supply is shown in the market data on this page.

Two forces set the supply. New ETH is issued to validators as rewards, and the base fee on every transaction is burned. When the network is busy, the burn can be larger than the issuance and the supply shrinks; this happened for long stretches between the Merge in 2022 and early 2024. Since fees fell in 2024, issuance has been larger than the burn, so the supply has been growing again, by well under 1% a year. Whether ETH is inflationary or deflationary at any moment depends on how much the network is used.

The genesis supply in 2015 was about 72 million ETH, of which 60 million were sold in a public crowdsale in 2014. The rest came from mining rewards until 2022 and from staking rewards since then.

Staking ETH

Staking means locking up ETH to help run proof of stake. In return, stakers earn rewards paid in newly issued ETH and a share of transaction tips. About a third of all ETH is staked.

Solo staking: running your own validator takes 32 ETH and a computer that stays online. Since Pectra, one validator can hold up to 2,048 ETH, but 32 ETH is still the minimum to start one.

Pooled and liquid staking: staking pools let you stake any amount. Liquid staking services give you a token in return, such as stETH, that represents your staked ETH plus rewards and can be used elsewhere in DeFi. Learn more about liquid staking tokens.

Exchange staking: some exchanges stake ETH on behalf of their customers.

Staking has risks. Rewards vary, a validator that misbehaves or goes offline can be penalized, staking services can be hacked or fail, and leaving takes time: withdrawals wait in a network queue that can run from days to weeks when many people exit at once. Staking rewards may also be taxable where you live.

Layer 2 networks

Ethereum's main chain, often called layer 1, can only fit a limited number of transactions in each block. Layer 2 networks, or rollups, process transactions on their own chains and post compressed data and proofs back to Ethereum, which keeps them secured by Ethereum while cutting fees to cents or less.

The largest rollups by value secured are Base, Arbitrum One and OP Mainnet. They use ETH for fees, so the same ETH can be moved between Ethereum and its layer 2s. Two upgrades made layer 2s much cheaper: Dencun in March 2024 gave rollups a separate, cheaper space for their data called blobs, and Fusaka in December 2025 let the network carry many more blobs. See our guide to layer 2 on Ethereum.

When you send ETH, always check which network it is on. ETH on Base or Arbitrum One is real ETH, but it sits on a different network from ETH on Ethereum and has to be bridged to move between them.

Ethereum's upgrades: from the Merge to Glamsterdam

Ethereum changes through planned network upgrades, each made of Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) agreed by the developer community. "Ethereum 2.0" was the old name for the plan to move to proof of stake. It was never a separate coin, and the name was dropped after the Merge.

Because of the Merge, you can no longer mine ETH. Securing the network now means staking instead.

Ethereum vs Bitcoin

Bitcoin and Ethereum are the two largest cryptocurrencies, but they were built for different jobs. Bitcoin is designed to be scarce, sound money: a fixed supply of 21 million coins, a deliberately simple scripting language and proof-of-work mining. Ethereum is designed to be a programmable platform: smart contracts that can run almost any logic, proof of stake, and a supply that moves with network use. Many people hold both. For a full comparison, read Bitcoin vs Ethereum: the differences that matter, and see the Bitcoin price for live market data.

Who created Ethereum and who runs it?

Vitalik Buterin, then a 19-year-old writer and programmer, described Ethereum in a 2013 whitepaper. He and a group of co-founders funded development with a crowdsale in 2014, and the network went live on 30 July 2015. In 2016 a hack of The DAO, an early investment contract, led to a hard fork to recover the funds; the part of the community that rejected the fork kept the original chain running as Ethereum Classic. Read more about who created Ethereum.

No one owns Ethereum. The Ethereum Foundation, a non-profit based in Switzerland, funds research and coordination, but it does not control the network. Changes are proposed as EIPs, debated in public developer calls, and only take effect if independent teams build them into their software and node operators choose to run it. Several independent software clients run the network, so a bug in one does not stop the whole chain.

Ethereum ETFs

US spot Ethereum ETFs began trading on 23 July 2024, from issuers including BlackRock, Fidelity and Grayscale. An ETF gives price exposure through an ordinary brokerage account, but you do not hold the ETH yourself and cannot use it on the network. Since October 2025 some US Ethereum ETFs also stake part of their ETH, and BlackRock launched a staked Ethereum ETF in March 2026.

Risks to know

ETH's price can move sharply in either direction. Smart contracts can contain bugs that attackers exploit, and scams and phishing are common, so only connect your wallet to apps you trust and never share your recovery phrase. Fees can spike when the network is busy, the rules for staking and tokens are still changing in many countries, and staking and DeFi add their own risks on top of holding ETH. This page explains how Ethereum works and is not financial advice.

Buy, sell and hold ETH with Bitcoin.com

You can buy ETH with a card or bank transfer, sell ETH for cash in supported regions, and check what your ETH is worth with the ETH to USD converter. To hold ETH yourself, the self-custody Bitcoin.com Wallet supports the Ethereum network, as well as the Base and Arbitrum One layer 2s, and lets you swap ETH for other coins and tokens. You keep your own keys, so always store your recovery phrase safely.