Ethereum Classic price and where to buy ETC

What is Ethereum Classic?

Ethereum Classic is the original Ethereum chain. When Ethereum reversed a large hack in its early years by changing its history, part of the community kept running the unchanged chain, which became Ethereum Classic. It still uses proof of work, which Ethereum abandoned, and has a supply cap of about 210.7 million ETC.

How to buy Ethereum Classic, step by step

1. Pick an exchange. ETC is listed on every exchange we track. Compare fees, funding options and whether it serves your country in our exchange reviews.
2. Create and verify your account. Regulated exchanges ask for identity documents before you can deposit fiat.
3. Fund the account. A bank transfer or a stablecoin deposit usually costs far less than a card payment.
4. Buy ETC. Use the ETC/USDT or ETC/USD market, and check the cheapest venue in the table above first.
5. Decide where to keep it. On the exchange is simplest, but the exchange then holds your coins. ETC runs on its own chain, not on Ethereum: send it only to an Ethereum Classic address, never to an ETH address.

Where to buy Ethereum Classic at the best price

The cheapest venue right now is marked in the table above. Add its trading fee before comparing: on ETC the venues disagree by about 0.14 percent on average, so on a small purchase the fee and the funding method usually matter more.

• The price on that venue. Each row shows the gap to our composite.
• The trading fee. Our fee comparison lists spot fees side by side.
• How you fund the account. A bank transfer or stablecoin deposit is usually far cheaper than a card payment, which often costs several percent.

Why the Ethereum Classic price differs between exchanges

In our minute-by-minute measurement the gap between the highest and lowest venue averaged about 0.14 percent, against about 0.025 percent for Bitcoin. It went above half a percent in about 11 minutes out of every thousand, and reached about 1.9 percent at its widest.

About half of the ETC spot volume we track trades on a single venue. The spread figure at the top of this page is the live measurement; our guide on why crypto prices differ between exchanges explains the mechanism.

What moves the Ethereum Classic price

The wider crypto market, and in ETC’s case its own news too. In our hourly composite, ETC moved with Bitcoin at a correlation of about 0.60, where 1 would mean identical moves, and its moves were almost two and a half times the size of Bitcoin’s.

ETC-specific drivers come on top: mining economics, exchange listings and leverage. The funding rates on this page show whether leveraged traders are paying to be long or short right now.

Pros and cons of Ethereum Classic

Pros

• Proof of work and a fixed supply cap of about 210.7 million.
• The unchanged original Ethereum history.
• Listed on every exchange we track.

Cons

• A much smaller ecosystem than Ethereum’s.
• Smaller proof-of-work chains are more exposed to attacks by miners renting hash power.
• It trades far below its all-time high of about $167.

Ethereum Classic’s highest price

Ethereum Classic’s all-time high is about $167 on volume-weighted data. The chart above shows the last 30 days of our composite, and the ETC to USD converter applies the live price to any amount.