Optimism price and where to buy OP

What is Optimism?

Optimism is an Ethereum layer-two network that bundles transactions and settles them on Ethereum, and the basis of a family of chains built on the same software, called the Superchain. OP is its governance token; fees on Optimism are paid in ETH.

How to buy Optimism, step by step

1. Pick an exchange. OP 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 OP. Use the OP/USDT or OP/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. OP lives on Optimism; to move it there you also need a little ETH for fees.

Where to buy Optimism at the best price

The cheapest venue right now is marked in the table above. Add its trading fee before comparing: on OP the venues disagree by about 0.15 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 Optimism price differs between exchanges

In our minute-by-minute measurement the gap between the highest and lowest venue averaged about 0.15 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 1.4 percent at its widest.

Just under half of the OP 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 Optimism price

The wider crypto market, and in OP’s case its own news too. In our hourly composite, OP moved with Bitcoin at a correlation of about 0.46, where 1 would mean identical moves, and its moves were about three times the size of Bitcoin’s.

OP-specific drivers come on top: activity across the Superchain, token unlocks 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 Optimism

Pros

• Governance over a large Ethereum layer-two ecosystem.
• Listed on every exchange we track.

Cons

• OP is not used to pay fees on Optimism, so network use does not create direct demand for it.
• Its hourly moves were about three times Bitcoin’s in our data.
• It trades far below its all-time high of about $4.84.

Optimism’s highest price

Optimism’s all-time high is about $4.84 on volume-weighted data. The chart above shows the last 30 days of our composite, and the OP to USD converter applies the live price to any amount.