On this day in 2015, the so-called Genesis Block was created—that is, the very first block of transactions in the Ethereum blockchain. The ETH cryptocurrency remains the second-largest by market capitalization after Bitcoin, with a value of over $230 billion as of mid-2026, according to RBC.
The first technical description of the Ethereum concept was published by Vitalik Buterin in 2013. Fundraising for the project was conducted in 2014 by the independent nonprofit organization Ethereum Foundation through an Initial Coin Offering (ICO). This effectively served as the equivalent of an IPO for crypto projects and was one of the first instances of distributing coins in this manner. In total, the developers managed to raise nearly 31,600 bitcoins—about $18 million at the exchange rate at the time.
The project’s co-founders included Vitalik Buterin, Charles Hoskinson (founder of Cardano), Mihai Alisi (founder of Bitcoin Magazine), Anthony Di Iorio (founder of Decentral), Amir Chetrit, Gavin Wood (founder of Polkadot), Jeffrey Wilke (founder of Grit Games), and Joseph Lubin (founder of Consensys and MetaMask, and head of SharpLink).
Under the terms of the ICO, the price of “Ether” was initially set at 2,000 ETH per 1 BTC and was supposed to remain at that level for 14 days before decreasing linearly to the final rate of 1,337 ETH per 1 BTC. In other words, relative to BTC, one “Ether” coin was worth between 0.0005 and 0.00074 BTC. When converted to dollars, it is generally accepted that one ETH was sold at a price of $0.31.
By July 30, 2026, the ETH price stood at $1,920, representing a nearly 6,200-fold increase. Relative to Bitcoin, ETH is trading at 0.0297, representing an increase of nearly 60 times its ICO price.
Interestingly, not all ICO participants have sold their Ethereum coins since then. Those who invested a few hundred dollars at the time and managed to hold onto their coins have now essentially become dollar millionaires. And from time to time, such investors transfer their assets to other addresses or exchange wallets, such as the owner of 10,000 ETH in early April.
Ethereum’s Plans
Meanwhile, the price trend over the past five years has not been positive for Ethereum. For example, at the peak of the 2021 bull market, the price of a single coin approached $5,000 for the first time. And if we look at this time frame, the losses from the peak in November 2021 to the end of July 2026 amounted to about 60%. There was another attempt to reach $5,000 per ETH in August 2025, but it also proved unsuccessful, with the all-time high reaching about $4,960.
The relatively weak price performance of “Ether” coincided with a period of stagnation in protocol governance, which had persisted since Ethereum’s transition to staking mechanisms in 2022 — prior to that, the blockchain operated on a mining model, similar to Bitcoin. Furthermore, as experts note, Ethereum faces many fundamental challenges: these include funding for new developments, as well as Ethereum’s “inefficient” economic model, which may put downward pressure on the asset’s price.
Amid this uncertainty, since 2026 the ETH developer community has become active in virtually all areas of development, and Buterin described the changes as a full-scale overhaul of the system, comparable to Ethereum’s transition to staking algorithms.
The developers of the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization have turned their attention to building artificial intelligence infrastructure, network privacy mechanisms, as well as a focus on scalability and even protecting the blockchain from quantum computers. In addition, independent organizations have begun to form around the project, with the goal of increasing institutional investors’ interest in the asset.
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