Bankless Co-Founder Exits Ether, Says ‘ETH Is Money’ Thesis Has Run Its Course

David Hoffman, co-founder of crypto media company Bankless and one of Ethereum’s most visible long-term advocates, disclosed on May 27 that he had sold his entire remaining Ether position the prior week, ending more than half a decade of personal exposure to the asset.

Hoffman stated on X he sold on Thursday, several days before publishing a detailed thread explaining the decision. He framed the move as the conclusion of a long-standing investment thesis rather than a loss of confidence in the network itself.

“The ETH is Money thesis didn’t fail… it played out,” Hoffman wrote. He confirmed he remains “massively bullish” on Ethereum as a network, but distinguished between the base layer’s growth and the prospects for the ETH token at current levels.

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Layer-2 And Stablecoin Capture

Hoffman noted that Ethereum operates without markup, supplying blockspace, settlement and tokenisation infrastructure at cost. “Ethereum takes no markup for anything it does. This is the nature of open source software,” he stated, characterising the protocol as “a giver, not a taker.”

That design, he argued, has allowed layer-2 rollups, stablecoin issuers and applications to absorb most of the economic upside from network growth. 

Roughly US$163 billion (AU$226.6 billion) in stablecoins now sit on Ethereum, up from about US$3 billion (AU$4.17 billion) in 2020 —a build-up Hoffman noted “is increasingly strengthening assets like the U.S. dollar instead of strengthening ETH as money.”

ETH reached approximately US$5,000 (AU$6,950) in August, matching its previous cycle peak, before retreating to the US$2,000 (AU$2,780) range where it has spent recent weeks struggling to hold above US$2,200 (AU$3,058). Hoffman noted the asset’s price has been “largely range-bound for five years.”

“Ethereum got the ETH price it deserves, and I don’t see ETH being rerated as an asset, higher or lower,” Hoffman stated, adding that “the window of opportunity for ETH to be ‘rerated’ by the market seems to be closing.”

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