Consensys is splitting in two and rebranding as MetaMask
The wallet business keeps the existing corporate entity, while the Consensys name moves to a new company. Completion isn't expected until late 2026.
Ethereum ETH
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Ethereum price
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Price data from CoinGecko. Charts by TradingView.
Ethereum converter
Type in either box. Uses the live mid-market rate above, which is not the rate you would get after an exchange’s spread and fees.
Latest Ethereum news
Ethereum sets a 2029 target for quantum-proofing its network
The Ethereum Foundation wants post-quantum cryptography live by the end of 2029. Nothing has shipped yet, and its own docs call the date a milestone.
Ledger has patched an Ethereum app bug that could sign the wrong transaction
Version 1.22.2 of Ledger's Ethereum app refuses a second signing request while a transaction is still on screen. Here's what to check before you sign again.
Sending ETH to a new address is about to cost more, and some wallets will quote you the old price
Ethereum's next upgrade ends the flat fee that every simple ETH transfer has carried since day one. Wallets built around the old number will get your sum wrong, so check before you send.
A 3x bitcoin fund won’t give you 3x bitcoin’s year
Cboe has asked the SEC to clear the first US funds tracking three times the daily move of bitcoin and ether. The word doing the heavy lifting in that sentence is "daily", and here's why it changes everything.
Nearly 14,000 Trezor owners had their names and addresses exposed by a shipping firm
Trezor says a breach at its shipping provider ShipMonk exposed personal data belonging to nearly 14,000 customers. No coins were taken, and none can be. The risk is what a verified list of hardware wallet owners is worth to somebody else.
A third of all ether is now staked. A proposal would pay you less for it
Ethereum researchers have filed a proposal that would destroy a growing slice of staking rewards as more people stake. Here's where that yield comes from, why anyone would want to shrink it, and who has the most riding on it staying put.
What Ethereum actually is
Ethereum is often described as the second bitcoin, which is the fastest way to misunderstand it. Bitcoin was built to move money without a bank in the middle. Ethereum was built to run programs without a company in the middle, and moving money is just one of the things those programs can do.
A program on Ethereum is called a smart contract, and the name is a fair description. It is an agreement written as code, published to a public network, and carried out automatically when its conditions are met. Nobody has to approve it, nobody can quietly change it afterwards, and everyone can read the terms. Send it the right instruction and it does exactly what it says, whether that is swapping one token for another, holding a deposit until a deadline, or issuing something that proves you own a thing.
ETH is the token you spend to make that happen. Every action costs a fee, known as gas, paid in ETH, and that fee is what stops anyone flooding the network with junk. So ETH is less like a digital coin sitting in a vault and more like the fuel and the toll rolled into one. Most of the things you have heard of that are not bitcoin, from stablecoins to NFTs to decentralised exchanges, were built on this network or one copying it.
Ethereum in the UK
Buying it
You buy ETH the same way you buy bitcoin, through an exchange that swaps pounds for tokens, and every exchange serving UK customers is supposed to be registered with the Financial Conduct Authority for money-laundering checks. That is why they all want your ID. Worth being clear about what that registration is not: the FCA has not approved the exchange as an investment, examined whether it is solvent, or promised to help you if it fails.
Protection, or the lack of it
Money in a UK bank is covered up to £85,000 by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme if the bank goes under. ETH is not covered by anything, wherever you hold it. If an exchange collapses with your tokens inside, you are a creditor in a queue rather than a customer with a claim. The regulator's standard warning is the honest one: do not put in money you are not prepared to lose.
Tax, including the staking part
HMRC treats ETH as an asset rather than currency, so selling at a profit, swapping it for another token or spending it can all trigger Capital Gains Tax on the gain above your annual allowance, which is small at £3,000 in recent tax years. Ethereum adds a wrinkle bitcoin does not: staking rewards. Money earned for helping run the network is generally treated as income when you receive it, and then the tokens can produce a separate capital gain when you later sell them. That is two taxable events from one activity, which catches people out. Allowances and rules move, so check HMRC's own guidance before filing.
UK figures last checked August 2026. Tax allowances and protection limits change; check the linked HMRC and FSCS guidance for the current position.
Nothing on this page is financial advice. Crypto is high risk: prices can go to zero, and if something goes wrong you are unlikely to be protected.
Common questions
What is a smart contract?
A program that lives on the network rather than on a company's server. It runs exactly as written when its conditions are met, nobody can quietly edit it afterwards, and anyone can read what it does before using it. The upside is that you do not have to trust the operator. The downside is the same thing: if the code has a flaw, it executes the flaw just as faithfully, and there is no support line to ring.
What is gas?
The fee you pay to make the network do something. It is priced in ETH and rises when the network is busy, in the same way a taxi costs more when everyone wants one. A simple transfer is cheap; a complicated contract costs more because it takes more work to run. Gas exists to stop people flooding the network with pointless requests, since every request costs the person making it.
How is Ethereum different from Bitcoin?
Different jobs. Bitcoin does one thing deliberately well: move and store value with no bank involved, with a hard cap of 21 million coins. Ethereum is a general-purpose platform for running programs, has no fixed supply cap, and changes far more often. Bitcoin's conservatism is a feature to its supporters; Ethereum's flexibility is a feature to its. They are not really competing for the same job.
What is staking?
Locking up ETH to help confirm transactions, and being paid for it. Since 2022 the network has been secured by people committing tokens rather than by machines burning electricity, so instead of miners you have validators. Staking pays a modest yield, but the ETH is committed rather than sitting in your pocket, and validators who behave badly can lose some of it. Most people stake through an exchange or a pool, which means trusting that provider on top of everything else.
What was The Merge?
In September 2022 Ethereum switched from mining to staking, in a single upgrade with no interruption to the network. It cut the electricity Ethereum uses by more than 99 percent, which removed the energy criticism that had followed it for years. It was also an extraordinary piece of engineering: swapping the foundations of a system holding hundreds of billions of dollars while it stayed running.
How many ETH are there?
There is no maximum, which is a real difference from bitcoin. New ETH is issued to validators, while a portion of every transaction fee is destroyed. When the network is busy, more is destroyed than created and the supply shrinks; when it is quiet, the supply grows. So the total drifts up and down rather than climbing towards a fixed ceiling.
What are Layer 2 networks?
Separate networks that do the work more cheaply and then post the results back to Ethereum for safekeeping. Names like Arbitrum, Optimism and Base are all Layer 2s. They exist because Ethereum itself can get expensive when busy, and they let you transact for pennies while still relying on Ethereum's security. Most everyday activity has moved to them, which is why the fees people complain about are often years out of date.
Are NFTs the same as Ethereum?
No, though they were mostly built on it. An NFT is just a record on the network saying a particular item belongs to a particular address. Ethereum provides the ledger; what the token points at, and whether that is worth anything, is a separate question entirely. The speculative frenzy of 2021 and 2022 came and went, and the underlying capability, proving who owns a specific digital thing, stayed put.
Do I have to buy a whole ETH?
No. ETH divides into very small units, and exchanges will sell you almost any fraction of one. The headline price is the price of a whole token, not the minimum you are allowed to hold, and most people who own ETH own a fraction of one.
Why does the price move so much?
Because nothing anchors it. A share has company earnings behind it and a currency has an economy; ETH's price is what the next buyer will pay. It moves on network activity, regulation, the fortunes of the projects built on it, and general appetite for risk. It has fallen by more than half more than once, and it has also multiplied many times over. That range is the honest answer.
Is my ETH protected in the UK if an exchange fails?
No. The £85,000 FSCS protection that covers a failed bank does not extend to crypto, whoever you bought it from. If the platform holding your tokens goes under, you join the queue of creditors. This is the biggest practical difference between money in a bank and ETH on an exchange, and it is why the standard advice is never to leave more there than you could stand to lose.
Official resources
Buying Ethereum in the UK
Our guide compares the FCA-registered platforms on what they verifiably charge, which ones let your coins leave, and what protection you do and do not get.
Where to buy, hold and store crypto →