Late-night screen flooding! Ethereum’s doomed bulls are liquidating $ETH, and a 10,000+ word long-form article reveals the endgame of “ETH as money”: the dream is over—don’t wait for revaluation.

If you didn't see that message on Twitter, I'll be upfront—I've sold all my $ETH holdings.

Damn, hearing myself say that sounds like a betrayal. After all these years, my career, community, personal brand, and business have all been tied to Ethereum. Making a decision wasn't easy, and a few tweets couldn't explain it, so I wrote this long post.

Simply put: the narrative "$ETH is money" didn't fail, but it has run its course.

Currently, the price of $ETH already reflects its actual value. I see no room for a structural revaluation in the short term, with limited upside or downside.

To add: I still strongly believe in the Ethereum network itself, and its future development will be impressive. But the prosperity of the network will only be reflected in a very small part of $ETH's price.

The idea that "$ETH is money" is an unreachable dream. Money, by nature, is a collective consensus game, and reaching consensus is itself very difficult.

Ethereum adds multiple layers of consensus challenges within its multi-layer architecture. This concept requires all parts to be successfully implemented and must be built on a foundation of market trust. Only if every layer of Ethereum's technology and ecosystem is fully ahead of competitors can $ETH truly become a universal currency.

Ethereum's vision is extremely ambitious; fully realizing its original blueprint is an incredibly daunting challenge. Objectively, despite many shortcomings, Ethereum's current performance is already outstanding, and its market cap matches its strength. But I have to admit, the window for a new valuation reappraisal of $ETH is closing.

Today, $ETH has some monetary attributes, but it is not the perfect currency we all aspire to.

Ethereum is a long-term consensus game. Turing-complete blockchains are a highly disruptive concept, and Ethereum's ultimate potential should encompass all sectors of the crypto industry. The only obstacle to its complete dominance is the challenge of consensus collaboration.

To reach the top, Ethereum needs to meet a series of strict conditions: the project governance must be sufficiently decentralized, built on broad consensus to establish trustworthiness and neutrality, and promote large-scale adoption; the team must be agile and innovative, like a startup facing survival crises; layer 2 networks must have space for independent development and autonomous market decisions, while being deeply integrated economically with Ethereum's overall ecosystem and brand; the roadmap must progress at an optimal pace, continuously consolidating growth momentum and market advantages, suppressing competitors, and strengthening market confidence in Ethereum and $ETH; core technological development must be rapid, demonstrating practical value and maintaining industry leadership.

The goal of "$ETH is money" is to create a transformative financial asset. With outstanding properties, $ETH has become a high-quality store of value globally, encouraging even those previously indifferent to crypto to adopt it. Ethereum's brand influence and $ETH's strength need to be powerful enough to attract traditional seasoned investors, making it an important component of retirement portfolios— all based on Ethereum's ecosystem being absolutely leading.

To realize "$ETH is money," every link in Ethereum's entire industry chain must be top-tier.

Ethereum has chosen the most difficult path, quite different from Bitcoin. Bitcoin continuously simplifies on-chain functions, fully strengthening $BTC's monetary attributes; whereas Ethereum keeps expanding on-chain capabilities, maximizing the utility of block space. It must outpace competitors and perfect this system to have a chance of making $ETH a global common currency.

We have now completed this journey, and Ethereum has gained a market share and market cap matching its potential. But I believe, the consensus game around "$ETH is money" has already reached its end.

External environment: multiple objective obstacles are hard to overcome. Looking back, Ethereum still faces many external real-world challenges to achieve its ultimate goal.

1. The price of native assets on public chains is deeply tied to on-chain revenue. We won't dwell on the debate over valuing public chains based on fees and revenue, but it’s undeniable that for smart contract blockchains, on-chain fees and revenue directly determine the pricing power of the native token.

By 2026, abundant data shows a high correlation between underlying chain activity, fee income, and native token appreciation. In 2021, Ethereum's on-chain revenue share topped the list, and $ETH experienced a strong rally; in 2024, $SOL's on-chain revenue grew against the trend, boosting its price; by 2026, $NEAR's valuation recovered, driven by surging on-chain revenue and increased token burns.

Looking at projects like $BNB and $TRX, which have among the highest cumulative revenues in the industry, their price movements match my initial expectations for $ETH—assuming $ETH can maintain its dominant position in underlying chain fees like in 2022.

2. The "ideal form of native crypto" has not stabilized. The crypto industry can develop in two ways, and 0xMakesy provides a precise interpretation: Ethereum represents the ideal form—self-sustaining, virtuous cycle, relying on DeFi, NFTs, DAOs, and other sectors to build a new financial system for the masses, tightly integrating creativity and value.

The alternative is practical: serving only as the underlying distributed ledger for traditional financial institutions. The industry’s initial vision was that tools could feed back into the ideal form, turning traditional finance’s demand for on-chain ledgers into continuous inflows into crypto, flowing into Ethereum, and ultimately into $ETH.

Perhaps if Ethereum had moved faster and been more effective, or if the industry hadn't been flooded with speculators and harvesters, crypto could have earned more reputation and respect. But looking at industry development, the window for a positive public perception of crypto was only from late 2020 to early 2022. Beyond that, the public view remains dominated by scams, speculation, and quick riches, with little real value for ordinary people.

The "$ETH is money" idea relies precisely on the ideal form of the crypto industry. During the pandemic, the unique environment of widespread online activity made $ETH a popular native internet currency. During that period, crypto concepts entered the mainstream for the first time, and $ETH gained broad recognition for its trendiness, disruptive nature, and inclusive philosophy. $BTC also shares these traits, and after 2021, it better maintained this consensus than $ETH.

This leads to a helpless speculation: perhaps the ideal form of crypto has never been able to establish a stable pattern. The pandemic was a period of extreme distortion in the global monetary system, and $ETH’s monetary attributes were highlighted largely because of this special environment. If that’s true, then the idea that "$ETH is money" is fundamentally based on overly high expectations for the ideal crypto industry, which ultimately failed to materialize.

3. Ethereum empowers various assets. $BTC, USD, gold... no matter what asset is defined as "money," it can ultimately be tokenized and circulated on Ethereum. As early as 2020, Nic Carter pointed out in Bankless that the development of stablecoins would divert some of $ETH’s role as Ethereum’s native currency. At that time, stablecoins within Ethereum’s ecosystem totaled only $3 billion; now, it has skyrocketed to $1.63 trillion, a 54-fold increase.

Ethereum’s infrastructure continuously amplifies the circulation network of existing mainstream currencies. This is also the core reason why the US actively promotes stablecoins—using Ethereum to reinforce the dollar’s global dominance, which is a clear US government strategy. It’s easy to see that the value of stablecoins in the Ethereum ecosystem far exceeds their role in reinforcing $ETH’s currency attributes.

Ethereum is a giver, not a taker. Essentially, Ethereum is a giver— not a predator. It provides top-tier global security for layer 2 networks at cost; it offers tokenization channels for various assets worldwide at cost; it secures hundreds of billions of decentralized financial assets at cost.

Ethereum offers all these services without extra profit margins. This is the hallmark of open-source software and Ethereum’s core charm. It unreservedly delivers core value to the world, always operating at cost. Ethereum’s pure, benevolent design makes it one of the most successful non-profit open-source projects globally. Because of this, it will inevitably attract massive users and ecosystem adoption.

Looking at human technological history, Ethereum may be one of the most influential open-source projects, and "non-profit protocol" is its core positioning. This also means that for $ETH to grow into a currency, it must be based on Ethereum maintaining an absolute market dominance over the long term.

As blockchain space becomes increasingly homogenized, on-chain fees will eventually approach zero. As long as Ethereum leads this process, it can preserve its profits and industry position; the "fat protocol" theory will ultimately be replaced by the "fat application" theory, with ecosystem benefits gradually shifting toward applications. As long as these applications are rooted in Ethereum’s ecosystem, the value of $ETH will not be threatened.

But the logic of "$ETH is money" conflicts with Ethereum’s fundamental positioning as a giver. Ethereum’s architecture was designed to return value to the entire ecosystem, with the network itself only retaining minimal revenue needed for operation. At the architectural level, $ETH is not the primary beneficiary of the ecosystem—that’s by design, not a flaw.

To make $ETH a universal currency, Ethereum would need to actively compete for industry dominance. But its underlying design was never meant to participate in this race. Only if Ethereum consistently maintains a crushing market advantage can "$ETH is money" become a reality.

The idea of "$ETH is money" carries overly high expectations. It demands that every step of Ethereum’s development be perfect, with a fault tolerance far lower than many imagine.

From 2021 to 2022, Ethereum’s rapid growth led many to believe this path would naturally succeed. Looking back, the rise of Solana in 2021 and the market’s anti-Ethereum sentiment were clear signals: the consensus game around Ethereum and $ETH has already deviated from its initial trajectory.

The Ethereum Foundation (EF) needs to move toward decentralization, embracing diverse governance forces; at the same time, it must act like a startup in crisis—responding swiftly to market changes and sprinting forward. Layer 2 teams need autonomous development rights but must also align under Ethereum’s overall brand. The technical coordination and feature integration between Ethereum mainnet and Layer 2s should be faster.

Relying on fees for valuation is the current norm for smart contract blockchains. To break out of this framework, Ethereum must rely on absolute strength to rewrite industry rules.

It’s not a complete failure yet. In summary, the idea that "$ETH is money" has not completely failed, but it also hasn't reached its original ultimate form. Ethereum has chosen a path that is the most difficult, with the grandest vision and purest ideals—this choice is commendable. It has achieved many remarkable accomplishments but also left some regrets in facing certain challenges. Its current market cap objectively reflects its overall strength.

I still firmly believe in Ethereum and its ecosystem for the long term. Ethereum’s architecture is designed for ecosystem applications and Layer 2 networks to achieve mutual benefits. According to the "fat application" theory, most fees in the ecosystem flow to applications; and with a development focus on Layer 2, 97% of ecosystem revenue goes to Layer 2. For $ETH as an asset, I think it’s unlikely to see a structural valuation revaluation in the short term, with limited upside and downside potential.

In conclusion, I sold my $ETH not because I am bearish on Ethereum itself. It’s just that, in my view, the narrative of "$ETH is money" has run its full course. So I am reallocating funds to explore other potential opportunities in the market.

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