Buy Ethereum (ETH)

Where can I buy Ethereum?

You can buy Ethereum at various European exchanges from as little as € 5, and technical knowledge is no longer required. We only show Ethereum exchanges that hold a MiCA authorisation and have a good reputation, so you can make your own choice. You pay by credit card, SEPA bank transfer or Wero, the European payment system.

Only providers with a MiCA authorisation

Since 30 December 2024, the Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation, better known as MiCA, applies across the entire European Union. National transition arrangements that let previously registered firms carry on ended in the course of 2025, so a provider offering crypto services in the EU now needs a MiCA authorisation. An authorisation granted in one member state passports across all 27, so a provider licensed in, for example, the Netherlands (Bitvavo), Austria (Bybit EU) or Malta (OKX) may operate throughout the EU.

What a MiCA authorisation means for you as a buyer:

• The provider is under ongoing supervision by an EU regulator
• Your euros and crypto must be kept separate from the exchange’s own assets
• Costs, risks and how the service works have to be stated clearly in advance
• There are rules against market abuse and a mandatory complaints procedure
• A KYC identity check is required at every European crypto provider

An authorisation says something about the supervision of the provider, not about the price risk of Ethereum. That risk always stays with you.

The Ethereum price and volatility

The Ethereum price is volatile and can rise or fall sharply, sometimes within a single day. The chart below gives an impression of how the price has moved over time. How the price behaved in the past says nothing about the future, so only invest money you can afford to lose.

What is Ethereum and what do you use it for?

Ethereum is a blockchain on which you can not only send value but also run programs. Those programs are called smart contracts: pieces of code that automatically execute what has been written into them, without a middleman. ETH, or Ether, is the coin you use to pay for transactions and computations on this network.

The idea came from Vitalik Buterin, who described it in a whitepaper in 2013. A crowdsale followed in 2014 to fund the project, and the network went live on 30 July 2015. Ethereum had eight co-founders, among them, besides Buterin, Gavin Wood, who later started Polkadot, and Charles Hoskinson, who went on to work on Cardano.

Many well-known projects from the wider crypto market run on Ethereum. Coins such as Chainlink, Uniswap and Aave are ERC20 tokens: they use Ethereum’s standard and run on the same network. Ethereum is also widely used for decentralized finance (DeFi), NFTs and the tokenisation of assets.

Unlike Bitcoin, Ethereum has no fixed maximum number of coins. Since the London upgrade in August 2021, part of the transaction fees is burned (EIP-1559), removing ETH from circulation. Combined with the lower issuance after the switch to Proof of Stake, the supply therefore hovers around a stable level and can even shrink in busy periods.

From Proof of Work to Proof of Stake and beyond

Ethereum is updated with a network upgrade roughly twice a year. The most important ones of recent years:

• The Merge (September 2022): Ethereum switched from Proof of Work to Proof of Stake. Energy use dropped by more than 99 percent and holders could now lock up ETH to help secure the network.
• Shapella (April 2023): from this upgrade onwards, stakers can withdraw their locked ETH and the rewards they have built up. That was not possible before.
• Dencun (March 2024): introduced so-called blobs (EIP-4844), letting Layer 2 networks write their data to Ethereum far more cheaply. Transactions on those networks became a lot cheaper as a result.
• Pectra (7 May 2025): brought smarter features for ordinary wallets (EIP-7702) and raised the maximum balance per validator from 32 to 2,048 ETH (EIP-7251).
• Fusaka (3 December 2025): further expanded the capacity for Layer 2 data with PeerDAS (EIP-7594) and stepped up the number of blobs per block.

Alongside these upgrades, the Layer 2 ecosystem has grown strongly. Networks such as Arbitrum, Optimism and Base settle transactions off the main network and rely on Ethereum itself for security. There is more institutional interest too: spot ETFs on Ethereum have been trading in the United States since 23 July 2024.

The DAO hack and the split with Ethereum Classic

A well-known event in Ethereum’s history is the DAO hack in 2016. The DAO was an investment fund that ran as a smart contract on Ethereum. Because of a flaw in that code, an attacker was able to siphon off a large amount of ETH. The important point: the flaw was in the DAO’s contract, not in the Ethereum network itself.

The community then decided to roll the network back to the situation before the hack, so affected participants got their ETH back. Not everyone agreed. Some users carried on with the old chain, which lives on as Ethereum Classic. The chain that most developers and users moved to is the Ethereum we know today.

Staking Ethereum

Because Ethereum runs on Proof of Stake, you can lock up ETH to help secure the network. In return you receive a reward. There are broadly two ways to do this.

You can run a validator yourself. That requires 32 ETH and a computer that stays online continuously. You keep full control, but you also carry the responsibility: if your node goes offline or makes mistakes, you can lose part of your stake.

The other way is staking through an exchange or a staking service. You stake any amount, including under 32 ETH, and the provider handles the technical side. That is simpler, but you hand your ETH over to a third party and usually pay part of the reward as a fee. Keep in mind that the reward is not fixed and that withdrawing staked ETH can take some time.

Storing Ethereum in a wallet

After your purchase, your ETH sits in the exchange wallet. That is handy to start with, but the exchange controls the keys. For larger amounts or longer-term storage, a wallet of your own is safer. Your options:

• Exchange wallet: built in at the provider, easy to use, but you do not hold the keys
• Software wallet: an app on your phone or computer, such as MetaMask, OKX Wallet or Trust Wallet. You control the keys yourself and can store ERC20 tokens in it too
• Hardware wallet: a device such as a Ledger or a Trezor that keeps your keys offline. This is the safest option for amounts you will not need for a while

With a wallet of your own you get a recovery phrase of usually twelve or twenty-four words. Whoever has those words has access to your ETH. So keep the recovery phrase offline in a place only you know, never share it, and never store it as a photo or text file on an internet-connected device. If you lose the recovery phrase, your Ethereum cannot be recovered.

What to look for when choosing an exchange

Since the ETH is the same at every exchange, compare the terms:

• The level of the trading fees and the spread
• Which regulator holds the MiCA authorisation on file
• Whether ETH is actually offered
• How quickly it is delivered after payment
• Whether there is an app plus support in your native language
• The payment methods on offer (credit card, SEPA bank transfer or Wero)

Keep in mind that the Ethereum price can move sharply up and down, and that supervision does not remove that price risk. Decide for yourself how much you can afford to lose and always do your own research before buying Ethereum.