Bankless co-founder David Hoffman mentioned he bought his ETH after concluding that the “ETH is cash” thesis has largely performed out, marking a notable shift from one in every of Ethereum’s most seen public advocates. Hoffman mentioned he stays “massively bullish” on Ethereum as a community, however not sees a transparent path for ETH, the asset, to obtain a structural rerating from right here.
“For somebody who constructed a profession, group, identification, and enterprise round Ethereum, this alternative doesn’t come evenly,” Hoffman wrote. “The ETH is Money thesis didn’t fail… it performed out. Ethereum bought the ETH value it deserves, and I don’t see ETH being rerated as an asset, larger or decrease.”
The argument shouldn’t be that Ethereum has failed. Hoffman’s thesis is extra uncomfortable for ETH holders: Ethereum could proceed to succeed as infrastructure whereas solely a marginal share of that success accrues to ETH itself. In his framing, the community has develop into one in every of crypto’s most necessary open-source programs, however its design decisions more and more favor purposes, rollups and exterior financial belongings over ETH’s personal financial premium.
Hoffman Says Ethereum’s Financial Window Is Closing
Hoffman described Ethereum as an enormous coordination sport, the place the “ETH is cash” thesis required a number of layers of the ecosystem to align directly. Ethereum wanted decentralized management, responsive governance, quick technical execution, coherent L2 incentives, and sufficient market dominance to make ETH the pure financial Schelling level of the ecosystem.
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That, he argued, was all the time a slim path. “Cash is a coordination sport, and coordination is difficult,” Hoffman wrote. “The Ethereum challenge itself is a stacked set of coordination challenges throughout a number of layers, and the ‘ETH is cash’ thesis required all of them to succeed, and succeed with confidence.”
In Hoffman’s view, Ethereum made the more durable architectural alternative in contrast with Bitcoin. Bitcoin stripped its base layer all the way down to elevate BTC’s financial function. Ethereum added programmability and sought to maximise blockspace utility. That method created monumental floor space for adoption, but in addition made ETH’s financial standing depending on Ethereum profitable throughout know-how, tradition, governance and market construction on the identical time.
Hoffman mentioned Ethereum achieved “a number of the means there,” however not the maximal model of the thesis many ETH bulls as soon as anticipated.
Charges, L2s And The Asset-Seize Drawback
A central a part of Hoffman’s argument is that smart-contract L1 tokens stay tied to exercise, charges and income. He pointed to ETH’s dominance in 2021, Solana’s resurgence in 2024, NEAR’s 2026 rerating alongside income and burn development, and long-running fee generators such as BNB and TRX as examples of the market rewarding chains that retain or increase direct income seize.
Ethereum, in contrast, has intentionally moved towards a construction the place worth leaks outward. Rollups scale execution, purposes seize extra of the user-facing margin, and Ethereum gives safe settlement at low value. Hoffman described this as a characteristic of Ethereum’s ideology and structure, however a problem for ETH as an asset.
“At its coronary heart, Ethereum is a giver, not a taker,” he wrote. “It provides L2s with the world’s most safe blockspace, at value. It tokenizes the belongings of the whole world, at value.”
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That framing sits on the core of his choice. Ethereum could also be “noble,” “good,” and “the world’s most profitable non-profit,” Hoffman argued, however that doesn’t routinely make ETH a greater funding from this level ahead. He mentioned the rollup-centric roadmap means L2s can take “97% margins,” whereas the fat-app thesis leaves extra economics with purposes quite than the bottom asset.
Stablecoins And The ‘Sturdy Crypto’ Drawback
Hoffman additionally argued that Ethereum’s utility could more and more strengthen different types of cash. He famous that Ethereum hosted $three billion in stablecoins in 2020 and $163 billion at the moment, a 54x improve. The community’s success as settlement infrastructure, in that sense, has helped increase tokenized {dollars}, not essentially ETH’s function as cash.
He additionally questioned whether or not the “robust model” of crypto (DeFi, NFTs, DAOs and an alternate monetary system constructed for its personal sake) ever turned a secure sufficient cultural or financial equilibrium. The second when ETH functioned most convincingly as web cash, he argued, coincided with the COVID-era surge in on-line exercise, threat urge for food and public fascination with crypto.
“ETH excelled as web cash on the precise second everybody was compelled onto the web,” Hoffman wrote. “The world found cryptocurrency for the primary time, and for that transient window, it was cool.”
The implication is that ETH’s financial premium could have trusted a broader crypto-native growth that didn’t maintain. Ethereum saved constructing, however the public narrative round crypto shifted again towards scams, grifts and hypothesis, weakening the social basis wanted for ETH to develop into a dominant store-of-value asset.
Hoffman closed by stressing that he’s not bearish on Ethereum itself. His choice, he mentioned, displays a capital allocation name after the “ETH is cash” thesis reached a mature end result.
At press time, ETH traded at $2,080.
Featured picture created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com
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