Vitalik Buterin Argues the ETH Fee-Burn Valuation Floor Was Never Real, Pushes Store-of-Value Case

Vitalik Buterin said ETH should be valued mainly as a store of value rather than as a fee-burning token, according to The Block, which reported on an X thread he posted on November 8. He said the fee-burn case never was as strong as it seemed, though he still supports keeping the EIP-1559 burn even if it only partly offsets issuance.

Buterin criticized the so-called floor model, in which market capitalization equals annual burn divided by a discount rate. In his example, $1 billion burned a year at a 4% rate implies a $25 billion floor. He argued the floor was never real, because most ETH burned in 2021 to 2023 came from crypto-internal activity whose revenue falls with ETH’s price. The Block’s data shows about 1.48 million ETH burned in 2022 against roughly 19,200 ETH so far in 2026.

He said justifying a market cap of roughly $270 billion by burn alone would make Ethereum comparable to L’Oreal, and that optimizing for fees would require interventionist governance and higher gas prices, conflicting with decentralization goals. For holders treating ETH as a store of value, he said the key metric is network survival, tying that to post-quantum security, partial ossification of the base layer and lightweight nodes.

Reactions were mixed in tone but largely supportive. Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko said Buterin is right that fees cannot be the product, and Moonrock Capital’s Simon Dedic called the framing an easier story for institutions.

Track the market yourself with AiTraderView’s FREE tools: Crypto Cockpit for charts and 75+ indicators, Crypto Screener to find setups, and Crypto Portfolio to follow your holdings. Just create a FREE account and try them yourself!

Sources:

• The Block: Vitalik Buterin says ETH should be valued as a store of value, not a fee-burning token