Historical report: Based on Decrypt’s article published November 10, 2026, at 01:14:10 UTC+8.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin argued that ETH’s value should rest less on transaction-fee burning and more on its role as a store of value. His case centers on Ethereum’s decentralization, censorship resistance and security—not on maximizing the amount of ETH removed from circulation.
The distinction revisits the logic behind “ultrasound money,” a label embraced after Ethereum began burning part of each transaction fee in 2021. That narrative linked network use to reduced token supply and, in turn, a potentially higher price. Buterin’s November 8, 2026, comments challenged how much weight that mechanism should carry.
“We should not feel sad if fee burn is < 10% of breakeven indefinitely; the value of ETH comes from elsewhere,” Buterin wrote.
Why fee burning is a contested foundation
Supporters of the fee-burn thesis argued that transaction fees gave ETH something resembling a price floor, comparable to the revenue and profits underpinning a company’s shares. According to Decrypt, Ethereum burned millions of ETH annually from 2021 through 2023.
Buterin said that was “never a true floor,” arguing that much of the burn came from activity internal to crypto, including lending and NFT purchases.
Layer-2 expansion adds another complication. Connor Howe, co-founder and CEO of infrastructure provider Enso, told Decrypt that a significant share of activity had moved to layer-2 networks, where users pay “almost nothing” to settle transactions. Optimizing for fee burning would also mean favoring higher gas prices, he said—an outcome users do not want.
Buterin framed that trade-off in organizational terms: optimizing fee revenue to justify what he described as ETH’s approximately $270 billion market capitalization at the time would make Ethereum function like a “world-scale major corporation.” In his argument, that approach would undermine decentralization, one of the network’s principal selling points.
The alternative: security, distribution and durability
A store of value is an asset intended to preserve worth over time. Gold has historically served that role, while Bitcoin supporters have promoted the “digital gold” comparison. Ethereum advocates quoted by Decrypt argued that ETH has a competing case, though their assessments do not establish that its price will remain stable.
Binji Pande, a founding member of Ethlabs, called ETH a more “future-proof store of value” than Bitcoin. He pointed to censorship resistance, broad availability and distribution, alongside Ethereum’s position in tokenization, stablecoins and decentralized finance.
Those are arguments about the network’s characteristics and potential uses—not adoption figures demonstrating the store-of-value thesis.
Pande also argued that gold’s physical storage constraints and limited portability make it less suited to a globalized world. His concerns about Bitcoin centered on preparedness for AI-related and quantum-computing threats.
Decrypt reported that the Ethereum Foundation formed a dedicated post-quantum team in January 2026 and that researchers had subsequently debated potential AI-powered threats. The report described the Bitcoin community as more divided over how to address quantum risks.
Julian Ma, an Ethlabs co-founder, argued that Ethereum’s investment in security and formal verification strengthened its case as a programmable store of value. His expectation that this preparation would pay off was an assessment, not evidence that those threats had been resolved.
Distribution was another part of Pande’s argument. He said the Ethereum Foundation owned less than 0.2% of ETH and that the token had traded for 11 years. He contrasted that history with newer assets, whose fair distribution he argued was difficult to verify and vulnerable to centralization.
A change in the story, not proof of the outcome
The shift is from valuing ETH primarily through fee destruction to valuing the durability and security of the network behind it. Layer-2 growth exposes the tension between those stories: lower transaction costs can serve users while weakening the claim that greater ecosystem activity must translate into greater ETH burning.
Howe agreed with Buterin’s position but criticized the timing. He said the Ethereum Foundation needed to listen more closely to applications building on its network.
“I think he is right,” Howe told Decrypt, “and I think it took too long to say it.”
The reporting captures a debate over how to explain ETH’s value. It does not establish that ETH is a superior store of value to Bitcoin or gold, or that security preparation guarantees future price stability.
