Milestones in Ethereum’s History: The “ICO”

Introduction

On July 30, 2025, it will be 10 years since the first block of the Ethereum chain was mined. But, as we mentioned in the previous post, getting there was a journey.

This is the second of three posts we’re sharing to revisit key milestones in Ethereum’s history on the occasion of its 10th anniversary. In the first post, we talked about the whitepaper, that foundational document that laid out the project’s main technical aspects. We explored the circumstances of its writing and presentation, and we also introduced the core concepts that Vitalik and the team had laid out in the text.

If you’d like to read that article, you can find it here.

The Problem

As we all know, having a great idea is essential, but without funding, it usually can’t go anywhere. The Ethereum team faced that same challenge. They needed to develop dozens of components to bring the network to life: testnets, clients in different programming languages, mining algorithms, and more.

In early 2014, Vitalik was selected for the Thiel Fellowship, a $100,000 grant that allowed him to fully dedicate his time to researching and developing the project’s early ideas. Shortly after, Bitcoin entrepreneur and early investor Antony Di Iorio provided initial funding for the project, becoming a co-founder.

However, Ethereum was envisioned as a large-scale project and needed greater financial resources. It wasn’t meant to be “just another project.” In Vitalik’s own words:

“Ethereum is not just ‘another altcoin,’ but a new path for cryptocurrencies and ultimately for peer-to-peer protocols as a whole. To achieve this, we would like to invest significant resources into hiring top-tier talent to improve the security and scalability of the Ethereum network itself, but also support a robust Ethereum ecosystem in the hopes of bringing other cryptocurrency and peer-to-peer projects into the fold.”

That quote appeared in a January 2014 Ethereum blog post, just days before the whitepaper’s presentation at the Bitcoin Miami conference. The article, titled Ethereum: Now Going Public, was published by Vitalik.

The Solution

The post then addressed the funding issue. Vitalik announced that a public presale of $ETH would soon begin to finance the project. This presale later became known as the “ICO,” short for Initial Coin Offering.

Regarding the team’s plans for the protocol, Vitalik explained:

“Throughout the funding stage, we’ll be working hard on development. Very soon, we’ll launch a centralized testnet, a server to which anyone can submit contracts and transactions. Then, we’ll move on to a decentralized testnet to test the networking and mining algorithms.

We also plan to host a contest, similar to those used to define the AES encryption standard in 2005 and SHA3 in 2013, where we’ll invite researchers from universities around the world to compete to create the best possible mining algorithm—one that is ASIC-resistant, hard to centralize, and fair. We’ll also explore other alternatives like proof of stake, proof of burn, and proof of excellence.”

Although the presale was initially expected to take place in February and March of 2014, it ultimately occurred between July 22 and September 2 of that year.

Through the website fund.ethereum.org (now inactive: avoid visiting any similar site, as it could be dangerous), interested individuals could purchase ETH before its official launch using bitcoin. The initial offering rate was 2,000 ETH per 1 BTC. Over time, the exchange rate decreased, eventually settling at 1,000 ETH per BTC.

Over 60 million ETH were sold, raising more than $18 million in BTC for the founding team.

When the network launched in July 2015, Ethereum had a supply of 80 million “premined” tokens. Around 80% were distributed among more than 6,000 wallets (it’s unclear how many each participant used). The rest went to the newly established Ethereum Foundation (≈10%) and the founding team (≈10%).

Ethereum’s ICO was significant and innovative in the crypto and blockchain world. While traditional finance had IPOs (Initial Public Offerings), this kind of scheduled, community-based fundraising was something entirely new.

Following Ethereum, many projects launched their own ICOs, leading to what many referred to as a bubble in 2017. Like all bubbles, it eventually burst. Many projects, some with good intentions, others with bad, promised major technological breakthroughs and future benefits, conducted their token sales, and then either vanished or failed spectacularly.

Despite those experiences, Ethereum’s ICO remains a landmark case of strategically using this mechanism to build public digital infrastructure.

So, What Was the ICO Experience Actually Like?

Today, buying a token can be extremely easy, especially via centralized exchanges. In 2014, it required a bit more technical skill.

An Ethereum blog post from the time is especially illuminating. Its introduction read:

“While we hope the ether purchasing experience goes smoothly for everyone, we recognize that there will always be situations where things don’t go exactly as planned. Maybe your internet cuts out mid-purchase. Maybe you accidentally click back, follow a link, or refresh the page while it’s loading. Maybe you forget to download your wallet. Or maybe you think you forgot your password and want to double-check it. In all of these cases, the experience is going to be a bit more complex than simply downloading a web app: you’ll need to run a few commands in the terminal using a Python script.”

The guide provided detailed instructions for issues such as:

• Forgetting to download your wallet before closing your browser tab.
• Checking if your purchase was successfully recorded.
• Testing whether you remembered your password correctly using the console.
• Manually completing a purchase if it was interrupted.
• Recovering BTC sent to an intermediate address by mistake.

Each problem had a solution—provided you had the time, attention to detail, and willingness to use the terminal.

You can read the full article here: https://blog.ethereum.org/2014/07/23/ether-purchase-troubleshooting

As you can see, participating in the ICO wasn’t for everyone, even with the Ethereum team’s strong communication and technical support. It required conviction, time, and a certain level of technical familiarity. And above all, a willingness to risk your BTC on a contract still under development—for a token that, at the time, was more a vision than a guarantee.

Some Facts…

At the time of Ethereum’s ICO in July 2014, 1 BTC could buy you 2,000 ETH. That means each ETH cost roughly 0.0005 BTC, or around $0.30.

As of the date of this article (July 17, 2025), 1 ETH is worth 0.0287 BTC, a nearly 4,700% increase in bitcoin terms. In dollars, the growth is even more impressive: from $0.30 during the ICO to over $3,400 today, ETH’s price has increased more than 11,000 times.

For those who participated in the presale, the return was historic: 11,090× in USD, 47× in BTC. In other words, someone who invested $1,000 in the ICO and held onto those ETH until today would now have over $11 million.

In Closing

Ten years later, this milestone remains a key reference for how to fund open digital infrastructure without relying on traditional structures. The ICO wasn’t just an economic transaction, it was a collective bet on a new layer of the internet,programmable, decentralized, and community-driven.

At ETH Kipu, we revisit these moments not out of nostalgia, but to remember that behind every line of code running on the network today, there were also decisions, context, lessons, and risks. Ethereum was built step by step, with vision, collaboration, and time.

Next week, we’ll conclude this series with the story of the genesis block, the official launch of the network.

Let’s keep connecting Ethereum’s present with its future.