Morning Minute: Vitalik Recasts ETH as a Store of Value
Summary
Vitalik Buterin urged Ethereum holders to value ETH for stability, decentralization, censorship resistance and security rather than its fee-burning mechanism. Fee burns have offset only about 2% of issuance in the first nine months of 2026, while supply grew 0.64%, partly as Ethereum’s rollup strategy shifted activity off the mainnet. Buterin argued that pursuing higher fees and burns could make Ethereum more costly and undermine its core strengths; he also said burns were never a reliable price floor. Some Ethereum advocates are promoting ETH as a programmable store of value, but the case faces competition from Bitcoin’s established role, hard supply cap and deeper institutional infrastructure, as well as Zcash’s privacy-focused pitch.
