Bankless co-founder and long-time Ethereum advocate David Hoffman said he has sold all his personal ETH, while stressing he remains bullish on the network itself. In a recent post he explained the move wasn’t driven by short-term bearishness or a collapse of faith in Ethereum’s technology.
Hoffman framed his decision as a reflection of how Ethereum’s economic role has changed. He argued the ‘ETH-as-money’ thesis didn’t collapse; instead, it unfolded differently than early proponents expected. Today, he says, Ethereum functions more as a low-cost security and settlement layer that enables value to accrue to applications and layer-2 networks built on top of it — in short, ‘a giver, not a taker.’
That shift alters how he values ETH. Hoffman pointed to fees as a key metric for layer-1 valuation: periods of explosive fee generation have historically coincided with major token repricings. Ethereum’s fee-driven momentum during the 2021 cycle helped fuel its run, he noted, but more recent upgrades and the migration of activity to L2s have limited persistent fee capture at the base layer. He compared Ethereum’s past dynamics to the fee surges that powered Solana’s 2024 rebound and NEAR’s growth in 2026.
Hoffman also highlighted stablecoins as one of Ethereum’s biggest successes. He noted Ethereum’s stablecoin liquidity rose dramatically from roughly $3 billion in 2020 to over $160 billion today, but argued that growth largely reinforces the dominance of the U.S. dollar rather than strengthening ETH as an independent monetary asset. In his view, Ethereum has become the infrastructure for digital dollars rather than a replacement for traditional money.
Despite selling ETH, Hoffman emphasized he hasn’t abandoned the network. He said he remains extremely optimistic about Ethereum’s technical and ecosystem prospects but has reallocated capital toward other opportunities where he sees more upside for a structural repricing.
His comments come amid a challenging stretch for ETH prices. The token remains well below its all-time high of $4,953 and has traded largely sideways since February amid rising competition from rival chains and continued migration to layer-2 solutions. At the time of reporting, ETH was trading around $2,016, down modestly on the day.
Many analysts continue to defend Ethereum’s strategic role. Some view the network as foundational infrastructure that could serve emerging use cases — including as a layer supporting AI-driven economies — even if the economic returns accrue differently than early token-centric narratives predicted.
Hoffman’s move illustrates a broader reassessment among long-time participants: deep conviction in the protocol’s technical importance can coexist with a different investment view about the token itself.