Why the Ethereum Founder Sold All His Crypto 0 19

34-year-old David Hoffman, co-founder of Bankless and one of the most well-known Ethereum evangelists, a long-time public advocate for Ethereum, sold all his ETH. Moreover, he explained in detail why he did it.

According to him, this is not a disappointment in Ethereum itself. He still considers the network important and strong. But he no longer believes that ETH will be the main beneficiary of its growth.

Hoffman's main thesis is this: the idea of "ETH as the money of the internet" has not worked. The token remains an important part of the ecosystem, but it has not become the universal digital asset that Ethereum supporters envisioned.

Ethereum may win as a technological platform, but that does not mean that ETH will necessarily win as an investment asset. A significant portion of the value is now taken by applications, L2 networks, stablecoins, tokenized real assets, and traditional financial players.

This is the main difference between Ethereum and Bitcoin. Everything around BTC is built on the asset itself. Ethereum, on the other hand, has grown into a complex infrastructure: DeFi, NFT, L2, smart contracts, tokenization. The network has become more powerful, but the investment story of ETH is much less obvious.

Ethereum provides security for L2 networks, supports DeFi, and helps transfer real assets to the blockchain almost at cost. This is good for the open ecosystem, but not necessarily good for the growth of ETH's value.

In the past, when the main activity and fees remained within Ethereum, the token looked stronger. Now a significant portion of the activity has moved to L2 and applications, and with it, part of the drivers for ETH's growth has gone.

A similar story applies to stablecoins. Their volume in the Ethereum network has increased dramatically, but the main beneficiary has not been ETH, but the dollar. Ethereum helps the dollar transition on-chain, but does not replace it with its own token.