How To Buy Ethereum USA (ETH)

Last Updated on February 11, 2022

Alright, so you want to buy some Ethereum (aka ETH). First things first, a quick crash course on buying crypto in general.

Cryptocurrencies are bought through various USA-based crypto exchanges. Once you’ve signed up with one, you can log in, and use your preferred payment method to buy and trade cryptocurrencies like ETH on the crypto exchange.

Our favourite exchange is Coinbase, it’s easy to sign up and they have an incredible app which makes trading a breeze.

Featured On

featured on logos

How To Buy Ethereum in the USA

  1. Register for an account with Coinbase.
  2. Verify your identity/account.
  3. Choose a payment method.
  4. Click the “Trade” button.
  5. Enter the amount USD you want to trade for ETH, or how much ETH you want to buy.
  6. Review the details.
  7. Click “Buy Ethereum”

Disclaimer: We may receive a commission for purchases made through the links on our site. However, this does not impact our reviews and comparisons. Learn more about our Affiliate Disclosure.

How To Get Started With Coinbase

1

Setup Your Account

As mentioned above, Coinbase is our go-to for trading cryptocurrencies in the USA, definitely if you're starting out. It's the most trustworthy exchange available and it makes trading buying and selling coins incredibly easy.

2

Verify Your Account

Before you do anything on Coinbase you'll have to verify your account. It has the fastest verification process we've tested so it won't take long.

Click on "Verify your account"

You'll have to verify your email, mobile number and identity to begin trading.

Coinbase verify account

You will then have to fill in all of your personal information including documents, don't be alarmed uploading this information, every exchange requires it. It's to ensure your safety and make everyone on the platform accountable.

3

Add a payment method

You'll first need to add a payment method so you can buy an sell cryptocurrency. You can also deposit Bitcoin straight into the platform if you already have some and would prefer trading with that.

Click on "Add payment method" or the Trade button in the top right which will take you there as well.

add payment method

4

Buy Coins

Once your account is verified and you've added a payment method, you can start buying and selling cryptocurrency.

Click on the blue Trade button in the top right

Then you can click on the coin name to see all the possible cryptocurrencies you can buy/sell.

coinbase buy coin list

Once you've decided what you want to buy you can indicate how much USD you want to buy.

Easy as that! You now have bought some cryptocurrency.

Ethereum Price USD

Find the ETH USD price below:

ethereum
ethereum

Ethereum (ETH)

Price
$ 1,850.58

Where To Buy Ethereum

We highly suggest using Coinbase to buy and sell Cryptocurrency. We've done a comparison of the top 10 exchanges in the world for the US to use and Coinbase clearly deserves the top spot.

Coinbase Exchange

Coinbase is by far our most recommended exchange for the US. They have an easy to use platform and a great app that makes trading simple for new users. This is the most trusted exchange in the USA.

Visit The Site

ethereum

What is Ethereum?

Nowadays, even people who are cryptocurrency illiterate know what the name Bitcoin stands for – the first and most popular digital coin to date. The same can’t be said of the second most prominent crypto asset, Ethereum, which although highly innovative, has attracted surprisingly less attention from the public.

So, why is it worth getting to know Ethereum?

First of all, it’s more than just another digital coin! Ethereum is an open-source platform launched in 2015, the brainchild of Russian-Canadian software engineer Vitalik Buterin. When the platform went viral, Buterin was only 21 years old!

His initial idea wasn’t to design a coin that was to compete against and topple Bitcoin. He wanted to show how the blockchain technology that was first developed with Bitcoin, can be used for more than just making online payments. He devised a new decentralized network and introduced its native currency ether (ETH). These coins can be spent and exchanged for other coins (same as bitcoins) or clients can use them to pay for Ethereum services like smart contracts and DApps.

The newly-introduced DApps or decentralized applications are Ethereum’s effort to replace the outdated client-server relationship model used by traditional applications. These apps have one central authority in charge of the platform that has ultimate control over the information collected by the app database.

For example, Facebook has more than two billion users worldwide and therefore has a huge database that’s stored on a server, and can easily sell this information to market companies. To prevent such things, Ethereum suggests storing the database on a blockchain, a digital ledger that stores data permanently and publicly. The blockchain is located on a multi-node network that can only be disrupted by external factors if they manage to overtake more than half of all the nodes.

Smart Contracts

A few years back, before smart contracts were introduced by Ethereum, the only way for you to sign a contract with another party was to use the help of an intermediary, i.e. a lawyer or a notary. This meant spending precious time dealing with paperwork and extra cash to cover for their services.

Thanks to Ethereum and its advanced blockchain technology, you now have the option to turn your contract into computer code and store it on the blockchain where it will remain publicly accessible. The code will include predetermined conditions to which everyone had agreed and that have to be met before the contract is executed automatically. This way, no one can be tricked and no condition can be sidestepped by either of the involved parties.

Once you set these conditions and translate them into codes, neither you nor any central authority or a third party will be able to change them, nor contribute with their biased tendencies in any way. Such entities will need to gain control over half of the multi-node network which is considered impossible.

Smart contracts are definitely the future for businesses, as they can help them drastically lower their administrative costs and save time on supervising operational processes (e.g. supply chains). Moreover, there’s no better way to avoid frauds and ensure transparency when recording property ownership, or even school and medical records for research purposes or to be viewed privately.

Who Created Ethereum?

Ethereum was created by Vitalik Buterin, a Moscow native whose family emigrated to Canada when he was six years old. His father, a computer scientist himself, was the one to introduce young Vitalik to Bitcoin and the world of crypto. His interest in the blockchain technology started to develop gradually, as he became more and more active in bitcoin chat forums.

In 2011, he co-founded Bitcoin Magazine and became its leading writer. He wrote for other crypto magazines and soon became an editor for Ledger. He wrote the whitepaper for Ethereum in 2013 and was awarded the Peter Theil fellowship in the following year. He used those $100,000 to bring his revolutionary idea for a decentralized platform to fruition.

Ethereum’s currency ether became the second most popular digital coin in the world and it’s currently worth around $280. The platform itself continues to leverage the blockchain potential for future inventions.

Cons of Ethereum

So far we’ve focused on the advantages of using Ethereum but we mustn’t overlook some of its drawbacks as well. As you already know, the platform and its blockchain are used for a variety of services, from completing money transactions and trading cryptocurrencies, to generating smart contracts, DApps, and building new tokens altogether.

The range of services, together with the platform’s current aim to switch from using the proof of work consensus method to the more advanced proof of stake method, inevitably slows down and overwhelms the whole network. Some people fear this could potentially result in Ethereum’s breakdown.

Another inconvenience is that Ethereum uses its own programming language, Solidity. The majority of developers aren’t familiar with this language which can lead to serious errors when writing the codes. Due to the irreversible nature of the blockchain, such mistakes could take forever to get fixed.

Ride The Wave

In the long run, Ethereum might challenge the usefulness and efficiency of some of the largest industries in the world by showing how their power can quickly shift to the masses.

If you want to stand a chance of making a profit, we advise you to keep your eyes wide open for the newest Ethereum inventions on the market. Try to be among the first ones to know of any applications to be built on its network. One such app is the original Unstoppable Domains that provide users with a domain for a decentralized website so as not to depend on any hosting providers.

Let’s wait and see what the future has in store for Ethereum!

We hope this article proved to be informative for you and made you think of Ethereum’s technology as highly promising. If you want to know how to buy Ethereum in Australia, or maybe buy Ethereum in Canada, feel free to check out our guides!

About The Author

James Headshot

James Page

Crypto Technical Writer

James is the main editor at Crypto Head. With a passion for finance and anything blockchain, cryptocurrency is right up his alley.

He’s responsible for most of the content on the site, trying his best to keep everything up to date and as informative as possible. You can also find James on LinkedIn.

Disclaimer: Digital currencies and cryptocurrencies are volatile and can involve a lot of risk. Their prices and performance is very unpredictable and past performance is no guarantee of future performance. Consult a financial advisor or obtain your own advice independent of this site before relying and acting on the information provided.