Vitalik Buterin Moves On From ‘Ultrasound Money,’ Says ETH’s Value Is Stability

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin wants people to stop valuing ETH as a fee-burning token and start treating it as a store of value, arguing that the burn was "never" as strong as it seemed. Binji Pande, founding member of Ethlabs, told Decrypt that he agrees, claiming that it is a more "future-proof store of value" than Bitcoin.

It's a notable shift in messaging from the Ethereum community, after ETH was branded as "ultrasound money" when the network started burning a portion of every transaction fee in 2021. The argument was that as more people used Ethereum, fewer coins would exist in circulation, and fewer coins meant a higher price. Now, however, Buterin claims that isn't as important as people may think.

"We should not feel sad if fee burn is < 10% of breakeven indefinitely; the value of ETH comes from elsewhere," Buterin tweeted on Sunday. That value, he argued, is stability, which comes from Ethereum being decentralized, resistant to censorship, and having strong security.

Expanding on why I believe "ETH as store of value (SoV)" makes much more sense to focus on than "ETH as fee-burning token".

Three primary reasons:

1. ETH as fee-burning token never was as strong as it seemed 2. Optimizing for ETH as fee-burning token would demand Ethereum and…

— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) November 8, 2026

Those in favour of the fee-burning structure argued that fees gave ETH a price floor, much like a company's stock may be backed by revenue and profits. From 2021 to 2023, Ethereum burned millions of ETH every year, but Buterin said this was "never a true floor." Most of these burns, he said, came from internal crypto uses like lending and silly NFT purchases.

Connor Howe, co-founder and CEO of infrastructure provider Enso, told Decrypt that Ethereum's layer-2 expansion made the fee-burning argument worse. Connor said that a significant portion of activity has moved onto layer-2s, and users pay "almost nothing" to settle transactions. To optimize a fee-burning token, he added, you'd also want to optimise for higher gas prices—which no one wants.

"If we decide we actually want to optimize ETH for burning fees to justify a present-day ~$270B market cap, then Ethereum would essentially be functioning as a world-scale major corporation," Buterin said. In doing that, Ethereum would lose one of its major selling points: decentralization.