ETH’s value may not be measured solely by gas revenue and staking yield.
At Devcon 8 in Mumbai, Vitalik put it very directly: “ETH is a store of value. ETH is money.”
BitMine Chairman Thomas Lee later called the statement a “seismic shift.”
His reasoning is that ETH shouldn’t be understood simply as a cash-flow-focused token like HYPE or LIT. It is more like a pristine, trusted form of collateral.
Why does this positioning matter?
More and more financial institutions want to bring traditional financial assets onto the blockchain, and Ethereum remains one of the main Layer 1 networks they choose.
As assets such as stocks, bonds, and funds are gradually tokenized, on-chain finance needs more than infrastructure for executing transactions. It also needs an underlying asset that is widely accepted and can be used for collateral and settlement.
Thomas Lee believes that ETH’s positioning as a store of value aligns precisely with this trajectory.
This also changes how the market evaluates ETH.
Focusing only on network fees, inflation rates, and staking yield can easily lead people to overlook the potential demand for ETH as an on-chain collateral asset.
Especially as tokenized finance and the AI economy expand in tandem, the larger the pool of assets in the Ethereum ecosystem, the more important the role of its underlying collateral becomes.
Of course, institutional confidence in ETH’s positioning doesn’t mean that all this demand has already materialized. Ultimately, it will depend on the scale of tokenized assets, on-chain collateral demand, and whether ETH can truly capture value from the growth of its ecosystem.
At Devcon 8 in Mumbai, Vitalik put it very directly: “ETH is a store of value. ETH is money.”
BitMine Chairman Thomas Lee later called the statement a “seismic shift.”
His reasoning is that ETH shouldn’t be understood simply as a cash-flow-focused token like HYPE or LIT. It is more like a pristine, trusted form of collateral.
Why does this positioning matter?
More and more financial institutions want to bring traditional financial assets onto the blockchain, and Ethereum remains one of the main Layer 1 networks they choose.
As assets such as stocks, bonds, and funds are gradually tokenized, on-chain finance needs more than infrastructure for executing transactions. It also needs an underlying asset that is widely accepted and can be used for collateral and settlement.
Thomas Lee believes that ETH’s positioning as a store of value aligns precisely with this trajectory.
This also changes how the market evaluates ETH.
Focusing only on network fees, inflation rates, and staking yield can easily lead people to overlook the potential demand for ETH as an on-chain collateral asset.
Especially as tokenized finance and the AI economy expand in tandem, the larger the pool of assets in the Ethereum ecosystem, the more important the role of its underlying collateral becomes.
Of course, institutional confidence in ETH’s positioning doesn’t mean that all this demand has already materialized. Ultimately, it will depend on the scale of tokenized assets, on-chain collateral demand, and whether ETH can truly capture value from the growth of its ecosystem.