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If you’re new to crypto and want to buy Ethereum, you’re in the right place. With the right crypto platform (a place to buy and sell crypto), it’s easy to do, simply sign up, add money, and buy your Ethereum. Below we explain our top picks to buy ethereum, which are Bitpanda, MoonPay, and Coinbase.
Ethereum is currently the second largest cryptocurrency, behind bitcoin, but has been catching up with it fast. It’s the foundation of crypto and is hugely popular.
Buying ethereum can be super simple, but knowing where to start can be confusing. But don't worry, here’s everything you need to know and how to buy ethereum in the UK.
Let’s get right to it, here’s where to buy ethereum in the UK – the best place is to use a cryptocurrency exchange (a place to buy and sell crypto). They’re perfect for everyone, from beginners to professional traders. They’re the go-to place for everyone buying ethereum and crypto in general.
Here’s our top picks to buy ethereum:
Bitpanda is a hugely popular crypto broker in Europe with a wide range of coins, top grade security and great features.
Bitpanda is a hugely popular crypto broker, particularly in Europe, where it’s one of the largest crypto platforms, and still growing. There’s over 7,000,000 customers worldwide, and was founded in 2014 in Europe (Austria), which is old for crypto!
You might have heard of them as they’ve sponsored PSG, AC Milan and Bayern Munich football teams, alongside the Davis Cup tennis tournament and the World Padel Tour.
Bitpanda is suited to pretty much every type of crypto investor, from those just getting started and looking to buy and hold assets such as bitcoin, all the way to advanced traders looking for a secure and reliable platform.
Trading is available 24/7, and there’s industry leading security to ensure your account and crypto are secure.
For beginners, it’s accessible, and there’s a wide range of help articles to get started and learn about investing and the platform itself. And you can get started with just £10.
Fees wise, it’s reasonable. There’s no fees to deposit or withdraw money, or to hold crypto within your account. You’ll pay a fee when you buy or sell crypto, and this ranges from 0.99% to 2.49% depending on which crypto you are buying (lower for the more popular coins such as bitcoin).
You can earn rewards on your crypto too (called staking), all within the Bitpanda platform.
The customer support is good, with a large help centre that covers most common questions and a support ticket system where you can email in for specific issues, with great service and feedback.
Overall, it’s a great platform, and well worth checking out.
Account fee: free
Dealing fee: from 0.99% to 2.49% per trade
Currency conversion fee: n/a
Deposit or withdrawal fees: n/a
MoonPay is a super popular and easy way to buy and sell crypto, with the crypto arriving directly in your own crypto wallet, after using a payment method such as a bank transfer or debit card (they’ll help you set up a crypto wallet too).
There’s a great range of coins available, it's reliable, secure, and an excellent option for beginners (and those more experienced).
MoonPay isn’t your typical crypto exchange (where you buy, sell and trade crypto), or crypto wallet (where you can store your crypto), it’s actually neither of those in the traditional sense, but has become super popular as a way of buying crypto directly with your local currency (like Pounds) and exchanging one crypto for another, but not via a complicated and confusing trading platform (like most crypto exchanges), instead it’s all handled in a seamless way, using your own wallet by easily connecting to MoonPay.
It’s very popular (and for good reason). There’s over 35 million people using MoonPay worldwide, and they’ve processed over $8 billion in transactions. That’s a lot. You can also purchase crypto using MoonPay in over 180 countries and local currencies, and there’s a huge range of payment options available (e.g. bank transfer, debit card, PayPal).
With MoonPay, you open an account, and then buy or sell cryptocurrencies directly from your own crypto wallet, or your MoonPay wallet (they set up for you), buying through your MoonPay account. This means that you have all the security of holding your own crypto (often recommended in the crypto world, instead of a 3rd party), whilst also benefiting from MoonPay’s security and reliability when buying or selling crypto.
It really couldn’t be easier. If you want to, you can set up your own wallet, such as with Trezor or Ledger (which are hardware wallets that secure your crypto in your home with a real physical device), or when using MoonPay, they’ll set you up with your own digital wallet to store your crypto.
There’s no complicated decisions or interfaces, all you need to do is essentially verify who you are, decide which crypto you want (e.g. bitcoin) and then either send money from your bank account to your MoonPay balance, which is handled for you through MoonPay, or you can buy directly with your bank account, and the crypto you buy will turn up in your wallet.
Minimum deposit: £20
Customer service: excellent
Customer feedback: customers love how easy it is, it’s security and it’s reliability
Account fee: free
Dealing fee: from 0% to 4.5% per trade
Coinbase is very well established, trustworthy and by far the most popular crypto exchange across the world to buy ethereum. It’s pretty much the ‘go-to’ place for everyone in crypto (and for good reason).
It’s easy to use, with a great mobile app and website, and a wide range of coins to buy, hold and trade.
It’s great for advanced traders too, with pretty much every feature you’d want to help you trade.
Bitpanda is a hugely popular crypto broker in Europe with a wide range of coins, top grade security and great features.
Bitpanda is a hugely popular crypto broker in Europe with a wide range of coins, top grade security and great features.
Ethereum, or rather, ether, which is the coin of the Ethereum network, can be bought on pretty much every crypto exchange out there (here’s the best crypto exchanges).
Only second to bitcoin, ethereum is a major cryptocurrency, and there’s huge demand for it. But does that mean you should just buy it from anywhere? Not at all. No two crypto exchanges are the same, they cater for different types of customers and can have different types of fees.
The best way to buy ethereum is to first choose an exchange (see above).
Once you’ve chosen your crypto exchange, sign up, deposit your cash (the cheapest is usually to do a bank transfer), and then simply buy your ethereum. All it takes is a few minutes, and you’ll have your first bit of ethereum. Congratulations!
By the way, all the exchanges above are free to use. So you could try them all if you like! You’ll only pay fees when you buy ethereum (or sell ethereum).
Note: these types of crypto exchanges are called centralised exchanges – they are real companies and businesses. In crypto, there’s also decentralised exchanges that run on the blockchain (more on that later), and not recommended for beginners.
Nope! It’s not really possible to buy ethereum or any crypto without any fees. An exchange has got to make money somehow! Although you can reduce the fees you pay if you choose a cheaper exchange…
So the cheapest way to buy ethereum in the UK is to use a low cost cryptocurrency exchange.
More advanced crypto exchanges also have lower fees (to entice the traders!), and so you can benefit if you use them too. However they are a lot more complicated to use, especially if you’re a complete beginner to crypto and investing in general.
Here’s the best advanced crypto exchanges if you want to have a look at all your options. Although we recommend simply using our top picks above.
Crypto is volatile (meaning the price changes a lot in a short space of time), and ethereum is no different! Make sure you understand this and are confident investing in an asset like this.
Here’s the latest price to buy one ethereum in Pounds (GBP):
Crypto is often represented in Dollars, so here’s the price to buy one ethereum in US Dollars (USD):
When you see ‘ETH’ that’s the ticker for ethereum that exchanges use. So you might see ‘buy ETH’ rather than buy ethereum on a trading platform, but it’s the same. And where you see ETHGBP and ETHUSD (see above), that’s the trading pair – which simply means trading ETH for GBP or trading ETH for USD.
Yes! You’ll be able to buy ethereum with Pounds on almost every crypto exchange. Simply deposit your pounds with a bank transfer (which is normally fee free and completely automated), or you can use a debit or credit card (often with higher fees).
Having said that, with some exchanges you might have to deposit Pounds and then convert them to Dollars first, and then buy ethereum with Dollars.
If you use one of our top picks and want to sell your ethereum in the future (hopefully after a large profit), simply do the exact reverse of buying it in the first place. So head back to the exchange, find your ethereum and hit sell, the exchange will handle everything and you’ll have your money back in your crypto exchange account which you can then withdraw back to your bank account via a bank transfer. Easy!
You may find there are some withdrawal fees, but this isn’t very common with crypto exchanges.
Oh, by the way, if you do make a large profit, you might have to pay tax (Capital Gains Tax explained below).
Ethereum was created by Vitalik Buterin in 2015 (with co-founders). After discovering bitcoin in 2012 and its underlying concept (a blockchain, explained below), they realised its potential and Ethereum was born.
Without getting too technical, Ethereum is a computer network that combines blockchain technology with computing power that allows anyone to use and build applications on, similar to the apps on your phone, and websites, but with the power and benefits of a blockchain (explained below).
Currently, lots of apps are overseen by large companies like Google and Apple – who control their own network, set the rules, collect vast amounts of individuals’ data, and take a big commission.
The difference with Ethereum is the computer power is spread out across the world, often by individuals running computers dedicated to helping run the network. This means it’s not controlled by any central organisation or business, and is therefore ‘decentralised’ and cannot be shut down or hacked and the data cannot be changed.
For apps to run on the Ethereum blockchain, they must use something called ‘ether’ to function and operate, technically ether is used to pay for every transaction they make on the blockchain. The payment is essentially a fee that goes to those people supporting the network by providing the computing power.
This fee, technically called a gas fee, paid in ether, replaces the need to pay for expensive servers and your own computing power like companies currently do, and simply pay per transaction that goes straight to those helping to keep Ethereum running.
A blockchain stores information in a certain order, in a way that makes it impossible to change, hack or cheat the system.
Imagine your bank statement with all of the transactions you’ve made, but instead of the bank providing it to you (who could change it, and only viewable by you and the bank), each transaction is permanently stored on the blockchain, and publicly available (your identity is still private).
It’s really that simple, but it’s the technology that does this which was a breakthrough – we won’t go into it here, but you could think of it as a technological change as big as the internet was.
You may not be thinking it’s a great invention, but wait! As you can’t cheat the system, it provides a truly accurate record on transactions, which acts as a base for other things to be built on, such as currencies like bitcoin.
And in the case of Ethereum, it has endless possibilities that don’t rely on a company in the middle to operate and provide that accurate record and service.
For instance, you could get car insurance without any insurance company involved, saving you middleman fees. The contract you make with the insurer would be stored as a permanent record, so if you went to make a claim and they decided the value of your car is now a lot lower, you’d have proof of what was agreed. Plus, the payment could actually be paid out automatically at the set price, without any human intervention (this is a basic example of what’s called a smart contract).
Or another example, maybe you could play a game of poker with no commission (rake) on each hand taken by the casino. The possibilities really are endless, it has the potential to change every industry in the world.
Ethereum has apps and websites running on its network, these are called decentralised apps, or dapps. And you interact with the apps, rather than Ethereum itself.
You often won’t even notice you are using the Ethereum network – think of Ethereum as the plumbing and pipes behind the scenes, you just use the tap to fill the kettle for a nice cup of tea.
The main categories for dapps are finance (often called decentralised finance, or DeFi), gaming, arts and collectables (such as NFTs, or Non-Fungible Tokens), and technology in general.
Some dapps and projects have their own coins, just like ether, which run on the Ethereum blockchain, which you can buy and trade, with your own wallet, or using a crypto exchange too.
You use these dapps by using a ‘wallet’, that connects directly to the network, which is just like an email account you might use to send and receive emails.
To interact with apps on the Ethereum blockchain, you’ll need your own wallet. This is effectively like a bank account combined with a passport. It can take you anywhere in the world of Ethereum, and holds some of your crypto too, which you’ll need for most apps.
You can store your crypto on the crypto exchange to start with, and send it back and forth to your wallet as and when you need.
The safest wallet to get is a hardware wallet. This is a real device (physical device) that you’ll need every time you want to make a transaction. It’s also called an offline wallet.
And when you have your own ethereum wallet, you will be responsible for your own security. You’ll be given a private key (also called a seed phrase), which is similar to a username and password. This is the only way you can recover your wallet if you need it! Never lose your private keys – keep them in a safe place.
Wallets are much easier than they might sound. You can get a wallet with most of our listed crypto exchanges above, so you can use the same platform where you’re buying ethereum, to manage your wallet too.
Note: you can have more than one wallet, so try them all and see which one you get on with best. It’s free after all.
You also can get a wallet from places other than those listed, however if you’re completely new to crypto, it might be best to start with an easy-to-use and understand wallet with a company suited more for newbies, like the ones above.
It’s certainly possible for ethereum to overtake bitcoin in terms of ‘market cap’ (market capitalisation), that’s how much all the tokens are worth when added up – and a great measure to value cryptocurrency projects. It’s very similar to measuring companies on the stock market.
However, who knows if it will. They’ll most likely both keep growing over time, and they’re both quite different! They’re not really competing with each other. We hope they both succeed and change the world for the better!
Yes! Ethereum, the blockchain and ether (the token), and actually, all cryptocurrencies are perfectly safe and legal to use in the UK.
In fact, the UK is a big supporter of crypto and intends to build a technology hub to support crypto and blockchain development in the UK. Feel free to read about how the Government is planning to make the UK a global cryptoasset technology hub.
Yep! It’s safe to buy ethereum in the UK. However, we recommended only using one of our listed crypto exchanges above – they’re all well established and trusted by the industry. Not all crypto exchanges can be safe. Please do your research.
In the UK, crypto exchanges need to be authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), which regulates financial services. Meaning they have to adhere to strict rules and regulations about protecting their customers' money and crypto.
However, you are not protected by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) – which protects you up to £85,000 if something were to go wrong with a company holding your money (such as going out of business). This is just for regular investing.
However, that doesn’t mean crypto exchanges themselves are unsafe. In fact, they have their own protections in place.
There’s bank grade security, and they have their own insurance, which pays out if something happens to the company. And, most of the crypto on exchanges are actually held in ‘cold storage’, which means they’re in wallets that have never touched the internet, and so cannot be hacked or compromised.
Tax wise, once you purchase your ethereum (ether), and if you make a profit, you may be liable for Capital Gains Tax. However this is only when you sell, and it’s only if your profits are more than your annual allowance, which is £3,000. That’s your allowance each tax year (April 6th to April 5th the following year.)
The rate you’ll pay is either 18% or 24% depending on how much total income you earn per year. That’s things like your salary, not your crypto trading profits.
If you earn less than £50,270 per year (a basic rate taxpayer), you’ll pay 18% on your crypto profits. And if you earn more than £50,270, so a higher rate (40%), or additional rate taxpayer (45%), you’ll pay 24% tax on your crypto profits.
This is actually the same for all investments you might have, so things like stocks and shares. Unless they are within a Stocks & Shares ISA, Lifetime ISA or personal pension.
Remember, if you’re holding for the long term, you don’t need to worry about tax at all – only when you decide to sell.
There you have it, pretty much everything you need to know about the basics of Ethereum and how to buy ethereum in the UK. As a reminder, for our top exchanges scroll up or click top picks for crypto exchanges.
There’s lots more to Ethereum, and the incredible innovation that’s being developed, and it can feel overwhelming, but the more you learn, the more comfortable you’ll be. The best way to learn is just to get stuck in! Good luck!
You can also visit the Ethereum website to learn more and if you’re a bit more technical, here’s the Ethereum whitepaper.
Good luck investing with ethereum!
Bitpanda is a hugely popular crypto broker in Europe with a wide range of coins, top grade security and great features.
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Edward Savage is a leading expert on money, with a background of 8 years working in financial services in London, has a business, accounting and finance degree, runs an investing community, and teaches people about money. He writes about all aspects of personal finance, including pensions, investing, mortgages and insurance.
This article was written, reviewed and fact checked by the expert team at Nuts About Money. You’re in safe hands. Learn more.
We're experts in all things crypto, with several years of combined experience writing and talking about crypto, blockchain and investing. We’ve lived the ups and downs of the bull and bear markets, and know our bitcoin from our blockchains, and are keen to see how the industry grows.
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Bitpanda is a hugely popular crypto broker in Europe with a wide range of coins, top grade security and great features.