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Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin stated on November 8, 2026, that the value of ETH derives from stability, decentralization, and security rather than the network’s fee-burning mechanism, according to Decrypt. Buterin argued that the fee burn was “never a true floor” for the asset’s price, marking a significant departure from the “ultrasound money” narrative established in 2021.
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Shift From Ultrasound Money
In 2021, as Ethereum began burning a portion of every transaction fee, the community branded ETH as “ultrasound money.” The core argument was that increased network usage would reduce the total supply of coins in circulation, thereby driving prices higher. Buterin now contends that this dynamic is less critical than previously believed. “We should not feel sad if fee burn is < 10% of breakeven indefinitely; the value of ETH comes from elsewhere," Buterin tweeted. He identified stability, resulting from the network's decentralized nature, censorship resistance, and strong security, as the primary drivers of ETH's worth.
Proponents of the fee-burning structure had previously compared ETH to a corporate stock backed by revenue and profits. Between 2021 and 2023, the network burned millions of ETH annually. However, Buterin noted that most of these burns originated from internal crypto activities, such as lending and NFT purchases, rather than organic external demand. Connor Howe, co-founder and CEO of infrastructure provider Enso, told Decrypt that Ethereum’s layer-2 expansion has further weakened the fee-burning argument. Howe explained that a significant portion of activity has migrated to layer-2s, where users pay “almost nothing” to settle transactions. He added that optimizing for fee burning would require optimizing for higher gas prices, a outcome undesirable to users.
Store of Value Argument
Buterin warned that if Ethereum optimized for fee burning to justify its current market cap of approximately $270 billion, the network would function like a “world-scale major corporation.” Such a shift would sacrifice decentralization, one of Ethereum’s key differentiators. Binji Pande, a founding member of Ethlabs, agreed with Buterin’s assessment. Pande told Decrypt that ETH is best positioned as a “future-proof store of value.” He highlighted the network’s censorship resistance, wide availability, and central role in growing sectors like tokenization, stablecoins, and decentralized finance (DeFi).
Pande compared ETH to gold and Bitcoin, arguing that both face limitations in the current globalized environment. He stated that gold lacks portability and has physical storage limits. Regarding Bitcoin, Pande expressed concern that it is not “future-proof” against emerging artificial intelligence and quantum computing threats. Ethereum has addressed these risks by forming a dedicated post-quantum team in January. Julian Ma, co-founder of Ethlabs, noted that security is ingrained more deeply into Ethereum’s culture than elsewhere. Ma stated that the years of preparation and investment into the formal verification of the Ethereum protocol are poised to pay off as AI-powered cyberattacks and cryptographic threats increase. By contrast, he observed that the Bitcoin community remains more fractured on how to tackle the quantum threat.
Foundation Ownership and Distribution
Pande also argued that newer assets cannot compete with ETH as a store of value because their fair distribution cannot be verified. He pointed out that the Ethereum Foundation owns less than 0.2% of ETH and that the token has traded for 11 years. “Trying to distribute or mine a new asset as a SoV in the lord’s 2026 is like trying to hide a sack of meat in a sea of piranhas,” Pande said, adding that such assets will inevitably become centralized. Howe, while agreeing with Buterin’s recent stance, criticized the Ethereum Foundation for not listening to the applications building on the network. “I think he is right,” Howe said, “and I think it took too long to say it.”
Source: Decrypt
