In 2025, another year of huge fluctuations in Ethereum's market.
As early as 2015, I looked down on Ethereum, foolishly believing that modifying the protocol based on Bitcoin, particularly the sidechain technology, was completely sufficient to achieve all innovations in blockchain, and creating a completely different consensus was unnecessary.
I really started paying attention to Ethereum during the ICO of 2016-2017. The invention of ICOs can definitely be ranked among the greatest inventions in the cryptocurrency world.
With the boom of ICOs, Ethereum's price quickly rose from below 100 dollars to over 1000 dollars in two years, reaching a peak of over 1400 dollars.
But with the bubble of ICOs bursting, by the end of 2018, it sharply corrected to below 100 dollars.
In 2020, with the reinvention and popularization of DeFi, I began to shift my work focus to Ethereum. DeFi also brought about a super bull market for Ethereum's price, which rose for more than two years, from a few hundred dollars to a peak of 4815.
In 2020, 2021, and 2022, it was the most remarkable three years of innovation in the cryptocurrency world (mainly Ethereum innovation), with DeFi, NFT, rollup, zk, all maturing during those times. I miss those years when there were so many innovations to research, during which I spent a lot of ETH gas and unexpectedly received many airdrops.
In 2022, with incidents like Luna, 3AC, and FTX, the massive bubble and leverage in the entire Ethereum ecosystem experienced terrifying chain liquidations, with prices dropping from 4000 back to 880 dollars.
That crash was absolutely epic; the magnitude of the price drop has certainly not been this great in history, but the total number of people, companies, institutions, coins, and money involved in that event should be one of the most famous in human history.
With 2023, Wall Street began to promote ETFs, and Ethereum's market also started to stabilize, first with BTC steadily rising.
In 2024, with the launch of ETFs, Ethereum surged wildly from over 1500 dollars, skyrocketing to a peak of 4100.
But from 2023 to 2024, I felt that many Ethereum enthusiasts were extremely confident, everyone firmly believed that ETH would surpass its previous high. I was also influenced by this frenzy in these two years, once promoting Ethereum to relatives and friends, forgetting the disaster BCH brought me.
But the reality did not go as everyone wished; after the ETF was launched, ETH's price plunged from 4100 to 2000.
Especially compared to BTC, Ethereum's price performance is really poor, the ETH/BTC exchange rate has become a joke in the entire industry, and E guards have become synonymous with fools.
Entering 2025, Ethereum faced a disaster moment, President Trump launched a tariff war against the world, which once drove Ethereum's price down to 1300, returning to the price of 2017, eight years ago, truly terrifying.
In the second half of 2025, Ethereum's price miraculously surged again, mainly influenced by various favorable policies from the U.S., especially the stablecoin bill and news of the Federal Reserve cutting interest rates.
Now it is August 14, 2025, Ethereum's price has approached an all-time high, reaching 4700, just a little bit away from the historical high of 4800.
Ethereum's price has completed the transition from innovation to policy-driven.
Innovation drives prices, always bringing new bubbles; technological innovation requires issuing tokens, issuing tokens leads to frenzy, which drives bubbles, and they will definitely burst, certainly crashing.
It always seems to be like this. The internet was the same, recalling the entrepreneurship of China's mobile internet, it was the same.
What about after policy-driven?
I feel that policies are coherent and predictable, which may stabilize coin prices.
Those who look at policies tend to be wealthier. Uh, those who look at innovation tend to be more risk-loving, but are obviously poorer.
But now looking at Wall Street, MicroStrategy, SharpLink Gaming, it feels too greedy, the concept of coins + stocks is being financed in the stock market, spending other people's money to buy coins, they surely don’t care about money, all publicly announcing they are buying hundreds of billions, not knowing how many insider trades are behind.
I feel the cryptocurrency world is destined to be turbulent.
I asked chatgpt to retrieve famous events that drove Ethereum's price fluctuations, and it was quite exciting to watch.
2015-08-01｜Initial Launch of Mainnet (Monthly Average)｜$1.36
2016-06-17｜The DAO Hacked (Intraday $21.5→$14)｜$~18*
2017-06-12｜ICO Boom: First Time Breaking $400｜$401.49
2017-12-10｜CryptoKitties Congested the Network｜$441.72
2018-01-13｜ICO Bubble Peaks (Intraday ~$1,431)｜$1,346
2018-12-15｜Bear Market Bottom｜$84.44
2020-06-15｜DeFi Summer: COMP Mining｜$244.56（6-20）
2020-09-17｜Uniswap Airdrop / Liquidity Mining｜$371.86（9-20）
2021-11-10｜Historical High｜$4,865
2022-05-12｜Terra/UST Chain Sell-off｜$~1,940*
2022-06-18｜3AC Crisis (Intraday <$900)｜$1,086.82
2022-11-11｜FTX Bankruptcy｜$1,296 (November Closing)
2024-05-23｜Approval of Spot ETH ETF Rules｜$3,776.93
2024-07-23｜First Day Trading of Spot ETH ETF｜$3,483.07
2024-11-06｜Trump Elected President｜$2,724.17
2025-04-02｜Trump Announces 'Reciprocal Tariffs'｜$1,795.31；
2025-4-10 China Counter Tariff Effective Date Closing $1,522.52）；
2025-07-18｜U.S. Stablecoin Bill (GENIUS Act) Effective｜$3,549.56