Vitalik Buterin Makes the Case for Ethereum as a Store of Value

The Ethereum co-founder says privacy, censorship resistance, and self-custody matter more to long-term ETH holders than fee-burning targets. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has made the case that ETH should be valued as a store of value rather than as a token priced on the fees it burns. In his view, the burn story was never as strong as it looked, and chasing it could undermine the blockchain’s decentralization. Why Fee Burning Is Not Enough to Value ETH In a series of posts on X, Buterin outlined the reasons for changing the way investors and the Ethereum community think about ETH’s value, first challenging the economic argument behind fee burning, which uses the net present value (NPV) model to estimate the worth of a token based on the fees removed permanently from circulation. Under this approach, a network that each year burns tokens worth $1 billion, with a 4% discount, could theoretically support a $25 billion valuation, he explained. “If the valuation drops lower than that, then someone could buy an asset expected to pay $1 per year forever for less than $25 (by buying some tokens, and then selling >4% of their supply each year so their share of the total pie remain...