Morning Minute: Vitalik Recasts ETH as a Store of Value

Executive Briefing

According to reporting by Decrypt Financial Technology, It’s a big shift for Ethereum from the “ultrasound money” days. But can ETH compete as a store-of-value play?

Detailed Factual Report

Vitalik Buterin spent Sunday on X telling Ethereum holders to stop valuing ETH as a fee-burning token and start valuing it as a store of value . “We should not feel sad if fee burn is less than 10% of breakeven indefinitely,” he wrote. “The value of ETH comes from elsewhere.”

That elsewhere is stability, which he ties to decentralization, censorship resistance and security. It replaces the ultrasound money pitch, the idea that network usage burns supply faster than staking creates it. The burn has not kept up in years. Through the first nine months of 2026 it offset about 2% of issuance while supply grew 0.64%, mostly because Ethereum’s own rollup roadmap moved activity and fees off the mainnet.

Buterin’s argument is that this is fine, and that chasing the burn would be worse. Maximizing fee revenue means wanting congestion and expensive blockspace. He warned it would turn Ethereum into “a world-scale major corporation” at the cost of what makes it worth using. The burn, he added, was “never a true floor” and came mostly from internal crypto churn like lending and “silly NFT purchases.”

Supporters are already building out the new frame. Ethlabs co-founder Binji Pande calls ETH a future-proof store of value and argues it beats Bitcoin on quantum and AI risk, citing eleven years of trading history and an Ethereum Foundation that holds under 0.2% of supply. Julian Ma of Ethlabs makes the related case that Ethereum’s security culture positions it as a programmable store of value as AI pressures cryptography.

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Source & Verification Provenance

Information in this article was compiled directly from records provided by Decrypt Financial Technology. Access the primary source document at: https://decrypt.co/382931/morning-minute-vitalik-recasts-eth-as-a-store-of-value. Reporting and editorial review conducted by the USA NOW News Desk.