Ethereum Classic Price Tracker (ETC) & Whale Tracker

What is Ethereum Classic

Ethereum Classic is the original Ethereum blockchain, the one that kept running when the Ethereum community voted to rewrite history. In June 2016 an attacker drained about 3.6 million ether from The DAO, an early investment contract, and in July the majority of Ethereum's developers, miners and users adopted a hard fork that returned the funds. A minority refused, arguing that a blockchain's record must never be edited, and continued the unforked chain under the name Ethereum Classic with the ticker ETC.

The project's motto is code is law. It has stayed a proof-of-work chain, kept a fixed monetary policy and avoided the sweeping redesigns that Ethereum went through, which makes it both a philosophical statement and, since Ethereum's 2022 Merge, the largest Ethereum-compatible network that can still be mined. The live price, market cap and supply at the top of this page refresh automatically.

Development is coordinated by the ETC Cooperative and a few volunteer teams rather than by a foundation with a large treasury.

How Ethereum Classic works

Ethereum Classic runs the Ethereum Virtual Machine, so Solidity contracts, MetaMask and the standard tooling work on it, with blocks arriving roughly every 13 seconds. It is secured by proof of work using the Etchash algorithm, a variant of Ethereum's old Ethash, and most of its hash rate comes from the graphics-card and specialised miners who lost their work when Ethereum moved to proof of stake.

The chain has tracked a subset of Ethereum's upgrades to stay compatible. The Spiral upgrade in early 2024 added the opcodes from Ethereum's Shanghai release, and earlier forks brought in Berlin and London features, though the community rejected EIP-1559's fee burning in favour of keeping all fees with miners. There is no staking, no slashing and no plan to change the consensus mechanism.

Security has been the hard lesson. The chain suffered 51 percent attacks in January 2019 and three times in August 2020, when attackers rented enough hash power to reorganise blocks and double-spend on exchanges. The MESS algorithm, introduced after those attacks, penalises long reorganisations, and the post-Merge influx of miners made attacks far more expensive.

Supply and tokenomics

Unlike Ethereum, ETC has a hard cap. The 5M20 monetary policy, adopted in 2017, reduces the block reward by 20 percent every five million blocks, which brings the total supply to a maximum of about 210.7 million ETC. Rewards fell to 2.56 ETC per block in 2024 and will keep stepping down roughly every two and a half years.

All issuance goes to miners, along with transaction fees. There is no foundation allocation and no treasury funded by the protocol, though a 2025 proposal to create an on-chain treasury for development funding was debated. Around 150 million ETC are in circulation, and the fixed, predictable schedule is one of the chain's main arguments for itself.

History and milestones

The chain was nearly abandoned in 2016 before exchanges including Poloniex listed ETC and the price found support from investors who agreed with the immutability principle. Grayscale launched an Ethereum Classic trust in 2017, and Barry Silbert's Digital Currency Group became a vocal backer. ETC reached an all-time high above 170 dollars in May 2021 during the broad altcoin rally.

The 2019 and 2020 attacks damaged its reputation and led Coinbase and others to require hundreds of confirmations for deposits. Ethereum's Merge in September 2022 changed its fortunes: miners migrated en masse, hash rate rose several times over, and ETC's security improved. Development has stayed slow but steady, with the 2024 Spiral upgrade and an active community around the ETC Cooperative. The chain reached its tenth anniversary as an independent network in 2026.

What people use Ethereum Classic for

Mining is the most concrete use. Ethereum Classic is the largest proof-of-work chain that runs the EVM, and the miners who kept their hardware after the Merge point it at ETC, selling the coins to cover electricity. For them the chain's value is its predictability.

On-chain activity is light: a few decentralised exchanges, stablecoin bridges and NFT projects run on it, but most Ethereum developers never deploy there. Holders tend to own ETC as a bet on the immutability principle, as a proof-of-work alternative to Ethereum, or through Grayscale's trust, which is among the token's largest holders.

Where to buy and trade Ethereum Classic

ETC is listed on Coinbase, Binance, Kraken, OKX, Bybit, Bitstamp and nearly every other exchange, with liquid pairs against the dollar and major stablecoins. Grayscale's Ethereum Classic trust trades over the counter in the United States, and exchange-traded products exist in Europe.

Any Ethereum-compatible wallet holds ETC once the network is added: MetaMask, Trust Wallet, Ledger and Trezor all support it. Addresses look identical to Ethereum addresses, so make sure an exchange withdrawal is set to the Ethereum Classic network, not Ethereum.

Risks to understand

Ethereum Classic has a small developer base, little application activity and a history of successful 51 percent attacks. Its security depends on miners who could leave for other chains if ETC's price falls relative to their costs. The chain's identity as the original Ethereum carries weight with a shrinking group.

ETC is volatile and tends to move with Ethereum while underperforming it over long periods. Confusion between ETH and ETC addresses causes real losses. This page is a reference for the data above, not investment advice.

Ethereum Classic FAQ