Ethereum Price History: A Decade of Disrupting Finance
When Canadian-Russian programmer Vitalik Buterin penned a white paper in 2013 outlining a new kind of blockchain platform, few could have predicted the seismic impact it would have on the world of finance, technology, and beyond.
Today (July 30), Ethereum turns 10 years old, marking a milestone that represents a decade of one of the most influential blockchain platforms and a testament to the growing pains, triumphs, and resilience of the decentralized movement.
How did Ethereum go from a white paper drafted by a 19-year-old to a billion-dollar ecosystem that reshaped global finance?
Read on to find out more.
What is Ethereum and who invented it?
Co-founder Buterin said in a 2016 interview that Ethereum was born out of admiration for Bitcoin’s decentralized structure and frustration at its limited capabilities.
“I thought [those in the Bitcoin community] weren’t approaching the problem in the right way. I thought they were going after individual applications; they were trying to kind of explicitly support each [use case] in a sort of Swiss Army knife protocol,” Buterin said, summarizing his motivation to build something more adaptable.
From this foundational idea, Ethereum emerged as a decentralized, programmable blockchain — a “world computer” that would host smart contracts and decentralized applications (dApps), cutting out middlemen and enabling new forms of coordination.
The foundation of the fledgling project was laid between 2013 and 2014. After releasing his white paper in late 2013, Buterin attracted a handful of co-founders, including Gavin Wood, Charles Hoskinson, Joseph Lubin, Anthony Di Iorio, Jeffrey Wilcke, Mihai Alisie, and Amir Chetrit. Together, they spearheaded a crowdfunding campaign in mid-2014 that raised over US$18 million, one of the earliest and most successful Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) in crypto history.
Despite this momentum, the Ethereum blockchain didn’t launch until July 30, 2015. That release, dubbed “Frontier,” was a basic, raw, and developer-focused version of Ethereum designed for building the infrastructure that would follow.
ETH, Ethereum’s native coin, initially traded for under a dollar. The early months saw little market movement as ETH hovered between US$0.70 and US$2.00, supported mainly by enthusiasts and developers interested in dApp potential.
When was Ethereum’s first major peak?
Ethereum’s first major price rally came during the 2017 crypto bull run, when rising global interest in blockchain technology and the initial coin offering (ICO) boom brought ETH into the mainstream.
After beginning the year at just barely US$8, Ethereum surged to a then-record high of around US$1,400 by January 2018, capping off one of the most explosive price increases in the history of digital assets. This more than 17,000 percent rise was driven by a combination of…
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