Bankless founder: Ethereum is a failed project without strong ETH price

Ryan Sean Adams, co-founder of Bankless, does not mince his words: anyone who is bullish on Ethereum but not on ETH is making a logical mistake. According to Adams, a strong Ethereum is simply impossible without an ETH worth trillions. What’s more, if ETH fails to become a global store of value, he outright considers Ethereum a failed project.

Ethereum is available at OKX and Bybit.

ETH as the economic engine of Ethereum

Adams emphasises the role of ETH as the economic bandwidth for DeFi. He argues that ETH is the only asset fully optimised for so-called CROPs (crypto-native projects). Anyone who fails to realise a high ETH value consequently also fails in the area of CROPs and ultimately on Ethereum as a whole.

To drive his point home, Adams draws a comparison with the United States: being bullish on America but not on the US economy makes no sense. According to him, Ethereum and ETH are inseparably linked as economic engines in the same way. He adds that it is more honest to call Ethereum a failed project than to cling to the idea that the network can flourish while ETH lags behind.

Co-founder Hoffman sees it differently

Not everyone within Bankless shares that view. Co-founder David Hoffman, who previously sold all his Ethereum and diversified into altcoins, sees it differently. Hoffman argues that Ethereum’s architecture was precisely designed to minimise explicit value capture. Moreover, according to him, no clear mechanism has yet been demonstrated that directly links Ethereum’s growth to sustained value accrual for ETH.

The debate comes at an unfavourable time for the Ethereum price. ETH is currently trading at $1.660. a decline of 5.8% over the past 24 hours. Earlier, the Ethereum price hit a yearly low around $1.700, while companies like FG Nexus suffered losses of more than $85 million on their Ethereum strategy. At the same time, Bitmine announced plans to invest billions in ETH.