Buterin Drops the 'Ultrasound Money' Pitch for 'Store of Value' — and a $13.6B ETH Treasury Calls It Vindication

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin spent the weekend reframing what ETH is supposed to be worth, and by Monday the largest corporate holder of the token was citing him as proof it had been right all along.

In an X post dated November 8, 2026, Buterin argued that ETH makes more sense as a "store of value" than as a "fee-burning token," per Decrypt's reporting. He gave three reasons, the first being that the burn "never was as strong as it seemed." His line: "We should not feel sad if fee burn is < 10% of breakeven indefinitely; the value of ETH comes from elsewhere." That "elsewhere," he said, is stability — rooted in Ethereum's decentralization, censorship resistance, and security.

What the burn actually was

The context matters, because this is a reversal of the network's own marketing. When Ethereum began burning a portion of every transaction fee in 2021 under EIP-1559, the token was branded "ultrasound money." The pitch: more usage means more ETH burned, fewer coins in circulation, higher price — a supply sink functioning like a price floor, the way revenue backstops a stock. Between 2021 and 2023, the network burned millions of ETH a year.

Buterin now says that floor was never real. Most of those burns, he told followers, came from "internal crypto uses like lending and silly NFT purchases" rather than durable demand. He also argued that chasing fee revenue would be self-defeating: optimizing ETH as a fee-burner would require high gas prices (which users hate) and would push Ethereum to behave like "a world-scale major corporation" to justify its roughly $270 billion market cap — sacrificing the decentralization that is supposed to be the point.

Connor Howe, CEO of infrastructure firm Enso, told Decrypt that Ethereum's own layer-2 scaling made the burn case worse: activity migrated to L2s where users "pay almost nothing" to settle, draining the fees that fed the burn. Howe added that Buterin "is right" but that "it took too long to say it," and that the Ethereum Foundation "needs to start to actually listen" to the applications built on it.

Bitmine turns the tweet into a buy signal

On Monday, NYSE-listed Bitmine Immersion Technologies said it had bought another 9,587 ETH — about $20 million — extending a weekly buying streak that began on June 30, 2025. That lifted its holdings to 6,070,092 ETH, worth roughly $13.6 billion at the firm's reference price of $2,234 per coin, or 4.97% of Ethereum's 122.2 million token supply. Bitmine calls its target of owning 5% of all ETH the "Alchemy of 5%," and says it is now 99% of the way there, reached in 15 months.

Chairman Tom Lee framed Buterin's post as validation. He pointed to comments Buterin reportedly made at the Devcon conference in Mumbai — "I've finally made up my mind, ETH is a store of value, ETH is money" — and called it a "seismic shift" that clarifies how ETH will "capture value" in a coming "supercycle of tokenization and AI." Lee argued ETH is "pristine and trusted collateral" rather than a cash-flow asset.

Beyond ETH, Bitmine reported total holdings of $14.3 billion as of November 8: 216 Bitcoin, $475 million in cash and securities, a $180 million stake in Beast Industries, and a $75 million position in Eightco Holdings, which it pitches as "a rare public proxy for indirect OpenAI exposure." It says 5,227,037 ETH — about 86% of its stash — is staked through its MAVAN platform, with projected annualized staking revenue of about $359 million. That makes Bitmine the largest ETH treasury and the second-largest crypto treasury overall, behind Michael Saylor's Strategy.

Key facts

• Buterin's claim: ETH's value is store-of-value stability, not fee burn; the burn was "never a true floor" and can stay under 10% of breakeven "indefinitely" (Buterin via X / Decrypt, Nov 8).
• ETH market cap referenced: ~$270 billion (Buterin via Decrypt).
• Bitmine purchase: 9,587 ETH ($20M), lifting holdings to 6,070,092 ETH ($13.6B at $2,234/coin), 4.97% of the 122.2M supply (Bitmine release via Decrypt, Nov 9).
• Total Bitmine holdings: $14.3B, incl. 216 BTC, $475M cash, $180M Beast Industries, $75M Eightco (Bitmine via Decrypt).
• Staking: 5,227,037 ETH (~86%) via MAVAN; ~$359M projected annual revenue (Bitmine via Decrypt).
• Strategy's BTC: ~849,327 BTC per Bitmine's release; Strategy's own November 9 filing (via Decrypt) put it at 850,364 BTC after a 1,036-BTC purchase. The two figures were reported days apart.

The real-world read

This is a messaging walk-back dressed as a revelation. "Ultrasound money" and the deflationary-burn narrative were central to how Ethereum sold itself for five years; Buterin is now saying the mechanism was weaker than advertised and that most burn volume came from "silly NFT purchases." Howe's comment — that Buterin "is right" but it "took too long to say" — is the quiet admission that the earlier framing oversold the case. Worth remembering when the next Ethereum narrative arrives with equal confidence.

Note also the subtle inflation in the retelling. Buterin's own written argument says "store of value." Tom Lee upgraded it to "ETH is money" — a stronger, catchier claim — and attributed it to a stage remark at Devcon that isn't independently documented. The headline "ETH is money" is doing promotional work that Buterin's actual post doesn't quite support.

Then there's who is cheering. The loudest validation comes from Bitmine, which holds $13.6 billion of the asset and has a public, mechanical reason to want sentiment up: it buys ETH every week and is 99% of the way to a branded "5%" target. A "seismic shift" that justifies accumulation is exactly what a company 99% through an accumulation campaign would say. Treat Lee's "supercycle" language as an interested party's forecast, not analysis. Decrypt also disclosed that Lee is an investor in Dastan, its own parent company — a conflict readers should weigh.

The pro-ETH, anti-Bitcoin case carried by Ethlabs' Binji Pande — that ETH is "more future-proof" than Bitcoin against quantum and AI threats, better distributed (the Ethereum Foundation owns "less than 0.2%"), and 11 years traded — comes from a founding member of an Ethereum-aligned entity, not a neutral party. It's a reasonable argument, but it's advocacy. And it sidesteps the obvious: if the fee burn was never the real value driver, a lot of people bought ETH on a thesis its own co-founder now partly disowns.

One unresolved number: Bitmine's release pegged Strategy at ~849,327 BTC, while Strategy's own filing the same week said 850,364 BTC after a fresh purchase — a small gap, but a reminder that treasury figures cited by competitors lag the primary filings.

Opinion, and whose

• Tom Lee (Bitmine chairman): Buterin's comments are a "seismic shift"; ETH is "pristine and trusted collateral" poised to benefit from a "supercycle of tokenization and AI." (Interested party — Bitmine holds $13.6B in ETH.)
• Vitalik Buterin: ETH should be valued for stability, not fee burn; optimizing for burn would erode decentralization.
• Binji Pande (Ethlabs): ETH is a "more future-proof store of value" than Bitcoin or gold, citing portability, distribution, and quantum/AI resilience. (Ethereum-aligned.)
• Julian Ma (Ethlabs): Ethereum's security investment and formal verification position it well against AI-driven cryptographic attacks.
• Connor Howe (Enso): Buterin is right but late; L2s gutted the fee-burn case, and the Foundation should listen to builders.

Sources

• Decrypt (Tier 2), "Vitalik Buterin Moves On From 'Ultrasound Money,'" Nov 9 — Buterin's X post and reasoning; commentary from Ethlabs' Pande and Ma and Enso's Howe. Pande and Ma are Ethereum-aligned; their comparative claims are advocacy, not neutral analysis.
• Decrypt (Tier 2), "Tom Lee's Bitmine Adds $20M in Ethereum," Nov 9 — Bitmine's purchase and holdings figures (sourced to the firm's own Monday release — an interested party on its own balance sheet); Lee's "seismic shift" framing and the attributed Devcon quote. Carries Decrypt's disclosure that Lee invests in its parent company, Dastan.
• Primary material referenced but not directly reviewed: Buterin's November 8 X post; his reported Devcon Mumbai remarks (undocumented beyond Lee's retelling); Bitmine's November 9 release; Strategy's November 9 SEC filing.

This is news reporting, not investment advice.