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Bankless co-founder and longtime Ethereum advocate David Hoffman has revealed that he sold his ETH holdings, marking a major shift for one of the crypto industry’s most recognizable Ethereum supporters.
In a detailed essay shared on Bankless and X, Hoffman said the decision was not driven by bearish sentiment toward Ethereum itself, but by a changing view of ETH as an investment asset.
While he remains “massively bullish” on Ethereum’s network, applications, and long-term ecosystem growth, Hoffman argued that the “ETH is Money” thesis has largely played out and may no longer offer the upside many investors once expected.
“For someone who built a career, community, identity, and business around Ethereum, this choice does not come lightly,” Hoffman wrote.
A central point in Hoffman’s argument is the growing disconnect between Ethereum’s success as a blockchain network and ETH’s ability to capture that value as an asset.
According to Hoffman, Ethereum has evolved into critical infrastructure for decentralized finance, stablecoins, tokenization, and layer-2 scaling solutions. However, he believes much of the economic value generated within the ecosystem now flows toward applications and rollups rather than directly benefiting ETH holders.
I spent the weekend putting my thoughts about $ETH and Ethereum into this article
I built my career, community, and business on Ethereum, so the decision to sell deserves a deeper explanation
I hope this is sufficient
Thank you, all https://t.co/cPCbMcz8EY
— David Hoffman (@TrustlessState) May 26, 2026
“I am incredibly bullish on Ethereum the network and its ecosystem,” Hoffman wrote. “As for ETH the asset, I have a harder time seeing ETH being structurally rerated in any direction.”
Hoffman explained that Ethereum intentionally chose a more ambitious path than Bitcoin by prioritizing programmability and open infrastructure over maximizing the monetary premium of its native token.
“Ethereum chose to add everything to its blockchain in order to maximize the utility of its blockspace,” he said.
Hoffman argued that the “ETH is Money” narrative depended on Ethereum successfully solving multiple coordination problems at once, including governance, decentralization, scaling, technical execution, and ecosystem alignment.
The thesis, popular during the 2020–2021 crypto bull market, envisioned ETH becoming a globally recognized reserve asset backed by the dominance of Ethereum’s network.
Hoffman: “Ethereum is too noble and prioritizes the whole ecosystem over everything else → ETH can’t become the ultimate supreme money → so I’m selling.”
Etherealize: “It’s exactly because Ethereum is so productive and noble that → ETH becomes the best form of money in… pic.twitter.com/Iq4WILoglc
— Ethereum Daily (@ETH_Daily) May 27, 2026
According to Hoffman, that scenario required Ethereum to maintain overwhelming market dominance while simultaneously scaling faster than rivals such as Solana and other layer-1 blockchains.
“The ETH is Money thesis required everything to go right for Ethereum,” he wrote.
Hoffman pointed to Solana’s rapid rise and growing anti-Ethereum sentiment beginning in 2021 as early warning signs that Ethereum’s coordination strategy was becoming increasingly difficult to maintain.
Another major factor behind Hoffman’s decision involves Ethereum’s evolving economic structure.
He noted that Ethereum’s rollup-centric roadmap and expanding layer-2 ecosystem have reduced transaction costs and improved scalability, but may also limit ETH’s direct value accrual.
“Ethereum is a giver, not a taker,” Hoffman wrote. “It supplies L2s with the world’s most secure blockspace, at cost.”
Hoffman also highlighted the explosive growth of stablecoins on Ethereum. While the network now secures hundreds of billions of dollars in tokenized assets and stablecoins, he argued that this primarily strengthens the US dollar rather than ETH as a competing form of money.
“The utility Ethereum provides is helping increase the monetary network of whatever is money,” he said.
Despite exiting his ETH position, Hoffman repeatedly emphasized that he still believes Ethereum will remain one of the most important technologies in crypto and global finance.
He described Ethereum as “perhaps the most impactful open-source software project humanity has ever built” and praised its role in enabling decentralized applications, DeFi protocols, and tokenized financial infrastructure.
Still, Hoffman believes the market has matured enough to distinguish between Ethereum’s ecosystem growth and ETH’s long-term valuation potential.
“The ETH is Money thesis didn’t fail,” Hoffman concluded. “It just also didn’t succeed to its fullest potential.”
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