Ethereum Price History: From 2015 to 2020

Disclaimer: This article aims to convey more market information and does not constitute any investment advice. The article only represents the author's viewpoint and does not represent the official stance of Mars Finance

Disclaimer: This article aims to convey more market information and does not constitute any investment advice. The article only represents the author's viewpoint and does not represent the official stance of Mars Finance.

Editor: Remember to follow me

Source: Daily Planet

The original text is from Medium, written by Jeffery Hancock

Translator: Daily Planet Moni

Ethereum is a cryptocurrency protocol. Because it is very different from Bitcoin, Litecoin and other payment technologies, it also brings more value and potential. This article will analyze the price fluctuations of Ethereum from the perspective of historical development, outlining its past price trends and hard fork history, and of course, looking forward to the future of Ethereum.

The first version of the Ethereum protocol was called "Frontier" and was released on July 30, 2015. In fact, there was no concept of "Ethereum" at that time. Although we can provide some analysis and conclusions on the value of Ethereum tokens based on initial sales data from July 2014 to September 2014 (prices ranging from approximately 0.3 to 0.45 US dollars), during that period, prices were not the most noteworthy thing for Ethereum, as they were formed based on transaction demand and supply ratio. However, just a month later, Ethereum was first listed on the cryptocurrency exchange, and now it has become the second largest cryptocurrency by market value.

2015: Ethereum took the first step

According to Etherscan. io's data, the first historical record of Ethereum's valuable trading occurred on August 7, 2015, when ETH was added to the Kraken exchange at a price of $2.77. But three days later, the price of Ethereum shrank fourfold to $0.68- the reason for such a significant drop as soon as it went public is likely due to the rapid selling by the earliest investors.

On August 13, 2015, due to the market's discovery of Ethereum as an emerging crypto asset and renewed interest in its investment, the price of Ethereum rose to $1.8 and remained at this level for three days (after which it took six months to return to this level). On August 18, 2015, the first significant milestone event of the Ethereum blockchain network occurred - the 100000th block was mined, but at this time the price fell to $1 and continued to decline for the following two months. In fact, the price trend of Ethereum at that time almost represented the state of the entire cryptocurrency market, and the earliest investors of Ethereum also began to continuously sell the tokens they obtained in the pre-sale stage to the market.

In October 2015, when the price of Ethereum reached $0.43, the downward trend was curbed, and then steadily rose to $1.3. After three months of adjustment, the price basically consolidated in the range of $0.8-1. During this period, more and more cryptocurrency enthusiasts began to gradually understand ETH. On November 9-13, 2015, the first Ethereum Developer Conference, Devcon, was held. Representatives of industry giants such as IBM, Microsoft, and UBS attended the conference and actively participated in discussing the development methods of Ethereum, making special contributions to the popularization of Ethereum.

2016: DAO, Hacker, and Ethereum Classic

On January 11, 2016, the price of Ethereum finally broke through the $1 mark again, and since that day, its price has never returned to below $1 again. In the following two months, Ethereum prices continued to rise rapidly due to rumors in the market that Ethereum was upgrading to a more stable version of the Homestead network protocol. On March 13, 2016, the price of Ethereum reached $15, marking the first time that the market value of Ethereum had exceeded $1 billion. On March 14, 2016, Ethereum implemented a Homestead hard fork, resulting in severe price fluctuations. By the end of April of that year, Ethereum prices had fallen twice, until they slid to $7.3.

With the success of the DAO project being widely reported by the media, Ethereum prices have reached the next high point, reaching their highest level for the entire year of 2016: $20.6. As part of token sales, the DAO project raised over 12 million ETH (approximately $150 million), which can be considered a landmark event in the era of initial token issuance (ICO) and also determined the location of the initial token issuance project ETH to attract investors' funds.

But what happened next surprised many people and dealt a huge blow to Ethereum: hackers exploited vulnerabilities in DAO code and stole approximately $50 million in ETH from the project on June 16, 2016. The market began to panic, causing Ethereum's price to drop to $11 in just two days, a drop of almost 50%. In fact, many people in the encryption community know that the co founder of Ethereum, VitalikButerin, is very optimistic about the DAO project and supports it in various possible ways, which is also one of the reasons why Ethereum prices have been affected.

Over the next month or so, the community began a lively discussion about the VitalikButerin plan to restore the Ethereum network to its pre attack state through the implementation of hard forking and thus restore stolen funds. Against the backdrop of these heated discussions, the price of Ethereum has also been greatly affected, leading to increased volatility: a week after the DAO hacking incident, the price of Ethereum fell to $14.3, and then briefly declined. As of July 7, 2016, the price of Ethereum had already reached a support level of $10.

On July 20, 2016, Ethereum implemented a controversial hard fork, which led to the current Ethereum Classic (ETC) project. When Ethereum Classic was first launched, its price had recovered to nearly $15, but it still did not break free from the fate of a decline. In early August 2016, it returned to $8.

A few days after the birth of Ethereum Classic, the price of Ethereum recovered to $11 and remained in the $10- $12.25 range for about a month and a half. In mid September 2016, there was news that the LedgerNanoS hardware wallet would increase support for Ethereum, which also stimulated Ethereum's price recovery and raised the price to $15 (also the highest price of the year).

On September 22, 2016, everyone knew that the Ethereum network had been attacked by DDoS, resulting in a significant decrease in blockchain network performance. This incident also became the trigger for the price of Ethereum to fall again, resulting in a drop of two and a half months. As of December 5, 2016, the closing price of Ethereum was only $6, and until the end of that year, the price of Ethereum hovered between $7-9.

2017: A stunning bull market has arrived!

Perhaps many people may not know that Ethereum's "starting price" at the beginning of 2017 was only $8, but the price remained stable throughout January and February of that year, reaching the price range of $13. On February 23, 2017, Ethereum was added to the social trading platform "eToro", which became the seven points for Ethereum's faster growth. It is worth mentioning that on the same day, there were 100000 unconfirmed transactions in the Bitcoin network, and an increasing number of cryptocurrency investors believed that the Bitcoin network was too slow and untimely. Therefore, they began to look for other investment methods and shifted their attention to Ethereum.

In the first ten days of March 2017, Ethereum made multiple attempts to break through the $20 resistance level, but the results were all unsuccessful and did not achieve any substantial breakthroughs. But in the following week, the price of Ethereum suddenly soared to $45 (even reaching $55 on some cryptocurrency exchanges), and the daily average trading volume even reached $450 million. In that month, the price of Ethereum remained basically in the range of $53 to $59, and then continuously adjusted in the range of $40 to $50.

On April 26, 2017, Ethereum prices began to rise again, almost doubling in just ten days. On May 5, 2017, the price of Ethereum soared to $95, and around the same day, the unconfirmed transaction volume of Bitcoin had exceeded 500000 coins, and its network speed had become slower. One reason was that many miners had already moved to the Ethereum blockchain.

However, Bitcoin was also in a growth stage in 2017, setting the direction for the entire cryptocurrency market, and many cryptocurrencies have followed Bitcoin's development at an astonishing speed. On May 18, 2017, Ethereum was added to the AVATRADE trading platform, which also stimulated its prices to new heights - in less than a month, the price of Ethereum increased fourfold (on June 12, 2017, the price of Ethereum reached $400), which means that if investors who bought Ethereum six months ago sold it at this time, the return on investment would reach 50 times! Moreover, Ethereum's market value has reached a historic high of 31.5% of the total cryptocurrency market value, compared to only 4% at the beginning of 2017.

In addition to the above reasons, Ethereum has also been widely used in the crypto community and dApps developer environment. The increasing demand for Ethereum tokens in initial token issuance projects (many projects have chosen ETH as their primary cryptocurrency for payment during token sales) has all contributed to the rise in Ethereum prices.

After such a rapid increase in prices, there was a natural adjustment, as regulators began to focus on the initial token issuance project and "crack down" on it. As a result, Ethereum prices experienced a consecutive month of decline. On July 16, 2017, Ethereum prices fell back to $150, but soon there was a new wave of growth. By September 1, 2017, Ethereum prices had once again returned to their high of $400. However, there were two consecutive weeks of revisions afterwards, especially after the release of the "94 Cryptography Ban", which banned initial token issuance and cryptocurrency trading in the Chinese market, leading to a sharp decline in the entire cryptocurrency market, and resulting in Ethereum closing at $200.

Until mid October 2017, with the news of Byzantine hard forking, Ethereum prices began to gradually recover. On October 15, 2017, Ethereum's hard fork upgrade was activated, and prices began to undergo smooth correction. When the time came to the middle of November 2017, the price of Ethereum was basically consolidated within the range of $275-300. However, when the time came to November 23, the price of Ethereum quickly exceeded the level of $400, and maintained at this support level for two and a half weeks. The reason for this was that the initial token issuance foam continued to expand, and Ethereum was still the main means of payment for financing these projects. On the other hand, during this period, the price of Bitcoin quickly soared to the level of $20000, which also drove up the overall price level of the cryptocurrency market.

On December 11, 2017, Ethereum prices entered their last growth phase since 2016, reaching a level of $800 during this period. In addition, like most other cryptocurrencies in the market at that time, with an 80% group correction in Bitcoin prices, Ethereum prices also corrected, briefly dropping to the $500- $600 range, and repeatedly hoping to break through the $750 level at the end of the year.

2018: Short sellers conquer the Ethereum market

From the first day of 2018, Ethereum prices began to skyrocket, and yes, it's not too much to describe it as' crazy '. On January 13, 2018, Ethereum prices reached an all-time high of $1400. Of course, during this period, the prices of most counterfeit coins also increased simultaneously, with some also reaching historical highs.

But soon, as Bitcoin prices began to decline, the market's "pleasure" began to weaken. Although Ethereum prices briefly rose on January 28, 2018 and hit the $1250 mark, they quickly declined thereafter. One of the main reasons for the decline in Ethereum prices at that time was due to the impact of the decline in Bitcoin prices, which followed throughout 2018.

On February 5, 2018, Ethereum experienced its first rebound from the $700 price range that year, with prices rising to $900 at one point. On February 14, 2018, Ethereum developers announced the upcoming release of the Ethereum GoIceberg client. This news immediately stimulated a slight increase in Ethereum prices, reaching the $1000 price point on February 18, 2018. But since then, the price of Ethereum has been declining until April 2018, eventually falling to $380. From this level, the last significant rebound in Ethereum prices in 2018 was on April 12, 2018, when Ethereum prices recovered to $500.

This rise triggered a wave of growth, but it did not last long. By May 5, 2018, the price of Ethereum had risen to $830, but it remained steadily declining until mid September (with a small rebound).

Although the initial token issuance stimulated a rapid increase in Ethereum prices in 2017, it had a significant negative impact on Ethereum throughout 2018. A large number of initial token issuance projects began to sell off Ethereum tokens, resulting in Ethereum prices falling much faster than other cryptocurrencies. It once fell to around $180 in September 2018, but then stabilized in the $200- $300 price range and remained stable until mid November 2018. At this point, the Ethereum community hopes to maintain price levels, and the news of a hard bifurcation in Constantinople in November also gave the market some positive signals.

But surprisingly, the activation update for Constantinople was delayed, and then encountered a six month long "crypto winter" - on November 14, 2018, the price of Bitcoin fell below $6000, halving in just one month. During this period, the price of Ethereum even plummeted to the level of $85, when its market value had already slipped from second place and was replaced by XRP for a month.

At the end of 2018, the price of Ethereum had a slight increase, basically maintaining at $130- $140. This also means that compared to the historical high of $1400 set in January 2018, the price of Ethereum has dropped 10 times in 2018.

2019: Initial signs of price recovery

According to CoinMarketCap data, in the first week of 2019, Ethereum's market value returned to second place, with a price of approximately $160 at that time. During this time period, almost all cryptocurrencies have no price trends of their own, basically keeping pace with the price trends of Bitcoin. The cryptocurrency community is also not very confident in the possibility of any reversal, and most industry insiders believe that the market will further shrink.

Afterwards, with the slight adjustment in Bitcoin prices again, Ethereum followed suit and fell to $100 on February 7, 2019. From that moment on, the value of Ethereum seemed to have entered an upward trajectory, briefly rising to two small highs of $160 and $180. Subsequently, on February 28, 2019, the Constantinople hard fork was finally implemented in the Ethereum network, but this did not seem to have a significant impact on prices.

In early April 2019, the price of Bitcoin suddenly increased by about $1000, but Ethereum, like other cryptocurrencies, did not keep up with the price trend of Bitcoin, but continued to move on the downward channel. However, on May 11, 2019, the price of Bitcoin increased by about $1000. At this time, the cryptocurrency market believed that the "cold winter" had passed, and Ethereum prices began to rise sharply, breaking through the $280 mark in just five days.

At the time of writing, according to CoinMarketCap data, the price of Ethereum was approximately $138.91, with a 24-hour increase of 3.26%.

As we enter 2020, with the upcoming halving of Bitcoin block rewards, many cryptocurrency investors believe that it will stimulate and push up Bitcoin prices. Will Ethereum also respond positively to this? Let's wait and see.

If reprinted, please indicate the source.