David Hoffman explains ETH exit

David Hoffman said that Ethereum has succeeded technologically, but Ethereum is no longer seeing a meaningful structural rerating above current levels.

David Hoffman, co-founder of Bankless, said he sold his Ethereum holdings because he believes the long-standing “Ethereum is money” premise has already largely proven itself. Despite this, he remains strongly bullish on the Ethereum network.

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

Ethereum chose the difficult path unlike Bitcoin

Hoffman said in his latest tweets: male The “Ethereum is money” thesis depends on Ethereum succeeding across multiple layers of orchestration, including decentralized leadership, governance, layer 2 ecosystems, roadmap implementation, and technology development.

Hoffman described Ethereum as “not Bitcoin,” and said that Bitcoin has simplified its blockchain to maximize the value of Bitcoin, while Ethereum has followed a more ambitious path by expanding utility across decentralized applications, finance, tokenization, and infrastructure. He even added that Ethereum has achieved part of that vision and gained the market cap it currently has, but said that the opportunity for Ethereum to be reclassified to a significantly higher level by the market now appears to be coming to an end.

The Bankless co-founder also explained that the broader “strong version” of cryptocurrencies, which focused on decentralized finance, NFTs, DAOs, and native cryptocurrency ecosystems, failed to maintain mainstream support over the long term outside of 2020 to 2022. He said cryptocurrencies’ reputation subsequently became associated with scams, cheating, and speculative behavior, ultimately weakening the social belief system required for ETH to function as money on a global scale.

He also stated that Ethereum’s utility increasingly benefits other forms of money, especially stablecoins and tokenized dollars, rather than Ethereum itself. Hoffman described Ethereum as a “giver, not a taker,” while saying that the network provides a secure block space, token infrastructure, and DeFi support at the lowest cost rather than extracting maximum value for Ethereum holders. He said that Ethereum’s architecture prioritizes applications, pooling operations, and ecosystem growth over Ethereum itself, making it difficult for the underlying crypto assets to achieve full global monetary status without overwhelming market dominance.

Ethereum in crisis?

Hoffman’s decision also comes at a time of increasing bearish sentiment around Ethereum. A recent report by Santiment Found Discussions on social media have increasingly shifted from optimism to frustration and concerns about more negatives.

You may also like:

Traders are increasingly viewing ETH as “dead money” compared to stronger-performing crypto assets in 2026, the analytics firm said, as weak ETF flows, lower on-chain activity, and growing competition from ecosystems like Solana and BNB Chain further weighed on sentiment.

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