If You Invested $1,000 in Ethereum in 2017
If you invested $1,000 in ether, the coin of the Ethereum network, at the close on 9 November 2017, it was worth $7,618 at the close on 12 October 2026. The same $1,000 in bitcoin was worth $11,446.
What your money in Ethereum became
Type any amount. Answers use real daily ether prices up to 12 October 2026.
Each line is the 12 October 2026 daily close (UTC) over the start-date close, from Yahoo Finance’s ETH-USD and BTC-USD series. Coin Metrics’ daily reference prices give answers within about 1% of these. Fixed at 12 October 2026, with no trading fees, network fees, taxes or inflation taken off.
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If you invested $1,000 in ether, the coin that runs the Ethereum network, at the close on 9 November 2017, it was worth $7,618 at the close on 12 October 2026.
Why 2017 and not ten years ago? Yahoo Finance’s daily ETH-USD history starts on 9 November 2017. Coin Metrics has older prices, but every price on this page is checked against both sources, so the window starts on the first day they share.
| Put in $1,000 on | Ether on 12 Oct 2026 | Bitcoin on 12 Oct 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| 12 Oct 2025 (1 year) | $587 | $710 |
| 12 Oct 2021 (5 years) | $700 | $1,459 |
| 9 Nov 2017 (since the first close) | $7,618 | $11,446 |
The comparison that matters for ether is bitcoin, the larger and older coin. Over every window in the table, bitcoin did better.
How it is calculated across two price sources
Divide the last close by the first. Ether closed at $2,444.36 on 12 October 2026 and at $320.88 on 9 November 2017, by Yahoo’s daily closes. The ratio is 7.62, so $1,000 became $7,618.
Coin Metrics gives a very close answer. Its daily reference price for ether was $319.45 on 9 November 2017 and $2,449.41 on 12 October 2026, which turns $1,000 into $7,668. Crypto trades all day every day, so two data firms closing their day at slightly different moments get slightly different prices.
Crypto days are calendar days. Ether trades on weekends, so the one-year start really is 12 October 2025, and there are 3,260 daily closes in the window instead of the 2,000-odd a stock would have.
As a yearly rate, $7,618 over almost nine years is about 25.6% a year. Bitcoin from the same day worked out to about 31% a year.
Ether against bitcoin, day by day
We put $1,000 into each coin on 9 November 2017 and compared the two stakes on every one of the 3,260 days.
Ether was ahead on 1,459 days, about 45% of them. It led early, by as much as 2.5 times on 1 February 2018, then fell behind for all of 2019 and 2020. It led again for most of 2021 and all of 2022 and 2023.
The last day ether was ahead was 14 August 2024. Bitcoin has led every day since.
| Year | Days ether was ahead | Days in the window |
|---|---|---|
| 2017 (from 9 Nov) | 26 | 53 |
| 2018 | 230 | 365 |
| 2019 | 0 | 365 |
| 2020 | 0 | 366 |
| 2021 | 254 | 365 |
| 2022 | 365 | 365 |
| 2023 | 365 | 365 |
| 2024 | 219 | 366 |
| 2025 | 0 | 365 |
| 2026 (to 12 Oct) | 0 | 285 |
Measured as a price ratio, ether lost about a third against bitcoin. One ether bought 33% less bitcoin on 12 October 2026 than on 9 November 2017. Coin Metrics’ prices give the same 33%.
The 2018 crash and the long waits
Ether’s first big peak came fast. It closed at $1,396.42 on 13 January 2018, and the 2017 stake was worth $4,352.
Eleven months later it had lost 94.0%. On 14 December 2018 ether closed at $84.31 and the stake was worth $263. A fall that deep needs a gain of about 1,556% to get back. Bitcoin’s worst fall from the same start was 83.4%.
Ether did not close above that January 2018 high until 2 February 2021, 1,116 days later on Yahoo’s closes; Coin Metrics’ prices put that day at 19 January 2021. Then it did it again: from a high on 8 November 2021 it took 1,383 days, until 22 August 2025, to close higher.
It is in a third wait now. The highest close in the data was $4,831.35 on 22 August 2025, when the 2017 stake stood at $15,056. By 25 June 2026 ether had fallen 67.6%, and on 12 October 2026 it was still below that high, 416 days on.
A worked example: $500 in October 2021
Say you put $500 into ether at the close on 12 October 2021, at $3,492.57.
Eight months later it was worth about $142. Ether closed at $993.64 on 18 June 2022.
By 12 October 2026 the close was $2,444.36. Divide: $2,444.36 ÷ $3,492.57 = 0.70. Your $500 became about $350, a loss of 30% after five years. Type 500 into the calculator’s 5-year line to check it.
The original data from two sources
The figures come from 3,260 daily closes of ether and bitcoin, 9 November 2017 to 12 October 2026, downloaded from Yahoo Finance on 13 October 2026, each compared with Coin Metrics’ daily reference price for the same date. On the median day the two sources differ by about 0.14% for ether.
The daily file, with both sources and the value of $1,000 in each coin, is published as the ether and bitcoin $1,000 data file.
The chart draws both $1,000 stakes on a log scale, where each gridline is 10 times the one below, so the 2018 crash and the 2021 run fit on one picture.
Where the blue line is above the amber one, ether was ahead. That happens in long blocks rather than day to day, which is why a single start or end date can make either coin look like the better choice.
When it fails: a start that flatters
The start date is the data’s, not a buyer’s. 9 November 2017 is simply where Yahoo’s history begins. It sits two months before ether’s 2018 peak; a start a few weeks later would show a much worse result.
Most of the crypto coins of 2017 are not on any page like this. Ether is here because it survived and stayed large. That is survivorship bias, and in crypto it is extreme.
Fees and taxes are left out. Exchange spreads, network fees and tax on gains would all lower the real figure, as would a lost key.
Holding through a 94% fall is rare. The headline assumes nobody sold in December 2018.
The past is not a forecast. Nothing here says what ether or bitcoin will do next, or whether to buy either.
Related pages on Ethereum and bitcoin
The Ethereum page explains what the network is and what ether is used for. The bitcoin page covers the coin it is compared with here.
To test buying a fixed amount every month instead of all at once, use the crypto DCA calculator.
If you are choosing between two coins, compare them over the same days, not over each one’s best stretch. Then size the position for a fall like ether’s 94% in 2018. Money you might need within a few years does not belong in it.
— Michael Whitman
This page is educational, not financial advice. Test every idea on your own charts before risking money. Some links on this page earn a commission if you buy through them. It costs you nothing and it does not decide what appears here or in what order — how these pages are made is set out in our methodology.