David Hoffman explains the release of ETH

David Hoffman said Ethereum has been successful technologically, but ETH may no longer see a significant structural revaluation higher than current levels.

Bankless co-founder David Hoffman said he sold his holdings in Ether because he believed the long-held thesis that “ETH is money” had already largely come to fruition. Despite this, he remains strongly bullish on Ethereum as a network.

According to Hoffman, the decision was not made lightly, given that he has built his career, business, community, and identity around Ethereum.

Ethereum took the hard route unlike Bitcoin

In his latest tweet, Hoffman said the “ETH is money” thesis depends on Ethereum succeeding through multiple levels of coordination, including decentralized leadership, governance, layer 2 ecosystems, roadmap execution, and technology development.

Hoffman described Ethereum as “not Bitcoin” and said Bitcoin had simplified its blockchain to maximize the value of BTC, while Ethereum was pursuing a more ambitious path by expanding utility to decentralized applications, finance, tokenization and infrastructure. He even added that Ethereum has achieved part of this vision and achieved the market capitalization it currently has, but said the opportunity for ETH to be significantly revalued upwards by the market now appears to be closing.

The Bankless co-founder also explained that the broader “strong version” of crypto, which focused on decentralized finance, NFTs, DAOs and cryptosystems, failed to maintain widespread long-term support outside of the 2020 to 2022 period. He said crypto’s reputation later became associated with scams, scams and speculative behavior, which eventually weaken the social belief system necessary for ETH to function as a currency on a global scale.

He further stated that Ether’s utility increasingly benefits other forms of money, particularly stablecoins and tokenized dollars, rather than ETH itself. Hoffman described Ethereum as a “giver, not a taker,” while asserting that the network provides secure block space, tokenization infrastructure, and DeFi support at minimal cost rather than extracting maximum value for ETH holders. He said Ethereum’s architecture prioritizes applications, stacks, and ecosystem growth over ETH itself, making it difficult for the underlying crypto asset to fully achieve global currency status without overwhelming market dominance.

Ethereum in crisis?

Hoffman’s decision also comes at a time when bearish sentiment around Ethereum is intensifying. A recent Santiment report found that discussions on social media have increasingly shifted from optimism to frustration and concerns about further downsides.

You might also like:

The analytics firm said traders increasingly view ETH as “dead money” compared to better-performing crypto assets in 2026, as weakening ETF flows, declining on-chain activity, and increasing competition from ecosystems such as Solana and BNB Chain have added pressure to sentiment.

Rumors of prominent Ethereum figures reducing or exiting their positions in ETH, including discussions around Hoffman, have also contributed to increased uncertainty in the market, especially as traders worry that insiders are losing confidence in the asset.