Ethereum’s Biggest Mistake (and How to Fix It) | Sam Kazemian

If we don't make sure that Ethereum is used as a store of value, and two, if we don't make sure that Ethereum, the technology, right, the settlement layer, is not this fundamental ledger we've lost.

Welcome to Banklist, where we explore the frontier of internet money and internet finance. Today on Banklist, we're exploring the topic of ETH, the asset. How should it be positioned? How do we talk about ETH? How should we understand it? These conversations, of course, about ETH are not new, but the one you are going to hear today from Sam Kasmanian pitches a specific and different path for the conversation around ETH than what the Ethereum community has been discussing for the past few years. Sam thinks that any and all things related to valuing ETH as a DCF, a discounted cash flow model, is bad, and we should stop doing it immediately. He thinks that we ought to talk about ETH exclusively as a store of value commodity money representing a huge cultural solution to the malaise of ETH's valuation. And any further effort spent on DCFing ETH will only continue to sink the price versus the rest of the market. I find Sam's points that are pretty interesting. I'm going to think about them more and more over the coming weeks and months. And I think this is a conversation that the Ethereum community ought to have as well. So let's go ahead and get right into this conversation with Sam Kasmanian from Frax Bankless Nation. I'm here with Sam Kasmanian. He's the CEO co-founder of Frax, Frax USD, Fraxtal, the entire Fraxal bankless banking system on top of Ethereum. And I've always appreciated Sam and Frax for a very like grounded and first principles position on what money, banking, and finance means. And I think you can see that in how Sam has constructed the Frax ecosystems. Sam, welcome back to Bankless.

Always a pleasure, David. Thanks for adding me on.

Sam, okay, so you have been a frequent commentator about Ether the Asset, the nature of Ether the Asset, and also how the Ethereum community and broadly speaking, we should be branding or positioning Ether the asset. Now, there are a lot of conversations going around these days with the declining Eth BTC ratio, of course, the changing valuation, and there's always been a loose conversation about what to do about Ether, right? Is it a non sovereign store of value? Is it a tech stock? Do we have revenues? Do we emphasize those revenues? How do we position this thing that has so many different facets? And maybe I can just throw it to you to kind of set the foundation and establish your kind of pillar of understanding about what you think Ether should be, what it is, and how you think the Ethereum community should position Ether the asset.

Yeah, for sure. So first of all, I want to just say like, so I've been involved or like in the Ethereum community since like 2014. I remember signing up for the Ether newsletter when the Ether sale went live and stuff. So I've seen the whole evolution of it and the DAO hack, the Ethereum Classic, ETH, and all that stuff. So I've seen the whole gamut of the entire life cycle. So I'm well aware of the history. In fact, it's because of the history that I talk about this. And so

The first thing I actually just want to say is

there's basically two types of ways to essentially value an asset.

Okay.

And there could be mixtures, right? All of these different theses of like triple point asset, ultrasound money, and all this stuff, but generally, from a first principle point of view.

There's two types of ways to value an asset. There's the fundamentals view, right? The discounted cash flow, which means the the asset represents some claim on some kind of like cash flow, whether the things producing the cash flow or series of smart contracts, group of people working to produce something and sell it. Doesn't matter, right? The asset is essentially equity like. And that doesn't mean this is like a comment on regulation or anything like that. This has nothing to do with it. It's just the fundamentals, like you said, first principles based approach. That's one type of asset, right? It represents some kind of discounted cash flow.

Exactly, exactly. And the second one that everyone is familiar with as Bitcoin, but also just normally in real life before crypto, right, is the commodity view of an asset where it does not represent any claim on that because it coherently can't.

We literally, if you have gold, it does not represent like a claim on any group of people's work or anything. It has flows-based, demand-based, you know, the one way that people talk about it all the time is like there's demand. People buy it, use it either in industrial use cases or use it as a store of value and hold it in volts, et cetera, et cetera, right? It's used in circuit boards, right? Because it's good conductivity, it's not corrosive, it's malleable, it's like the perfect type of uh atomic substance, right? Like structure for a lot of these things. And then that's the commodity based like valuation framework, right? That it's just

there's nothing that gives you any claims to any kind of discounted cash flow, and then it's just used in different places. And a lot of it is basically used in store of value for gold, for example, right? And then there's other things you can actually.

measure it even though it's really hard to actually go through the entire world, right? And then like deterministically compute how much are people buying for circuit boards, how much is like TSMC buying. We need to code it's like silicon, right? And things like that. But you could deterministically, it's not some voodoo magic thing of like, you know, one thing that I really disagree with is like this is not some kind of, if you talk about commodity premiums, right? Like commodity flows, it's not just a way to obscure stuff and get rid of like DCF or something like that, right? It's difficult, but it's a deterministic fundamentals based view of how to value an asset. Because some assets like gold, like silver, like oil, right? Like it's used in places, it's stored in barrels, et cetera, containers. You can actually reproduce and so thus you could falsify like gold shouldn't be trading at like $7,000 if this is the supply should be trading at $3,000 because this is the actual supply. These are all of the buy orders and sell orders in the entire world, even though that's a very hard thing to do. It's a deterministic algorithm, right? So that brings me back kind of to the ETH asset, right? And again I've been in crypto especially Ethereum for a really really long time and I was trying to think about you know what actually in my opinion went wrong with ETH the asset. And like the first thing that I always get back to is

I always separate ETH the technology with ETH the asset. And this is actually really, really important because you actually had a really good episode last week with Dan Kratt, OnScar, and Mike, and you guys, right? And it was funny because at the very beginning, I think it was OnScar or something, he was like, oh, well, on this episode, we're not going to talk about the price. Right. Let's talk about it. And so the first thing I was like, well, you guys are mainly here because of the awkward price right now, talking on the podcast, but I did appreciate that they fully separated the technology from the price and the asset, right? And so I think the first thing I want to say is the exact inverse of him is I'm not here to talk about the technology, I'm here to talk about the asset. And those are actually more different than people think. Is interesting because the Ethereum Foundation, the researchers, they're brilliant. And actually, I think I would say this from the very beginning 2014 to currently in 2025. They're probably the smartest people in the space in terms of what Vitalik has created, how he's created the technology, what ethos Ethereum has actually created in the ability of people to do in the world. Decentralized, trustless computation that actually allows people to do things on chain without needing any kind of middleman for a lot of all these things, right? DeFi, Fracts, which is what inspired us to build the original decentralized stablecoin, now more with like higher order institutions and all these things, right?

The issue is that's great. Like I think, in my opinion, I think Ethereum is going to continue to be the flag bearer of that like technology and it's going to continue to make the world a better place. That does not mean the Ethereum price is going to go up. Like those two things are not connected, not necessarily connected. In some way, they can be connected if it's done right, right? But they are not in some sense necessarily connected. And I think this is a big, big disconnect that people don't, which is where downstream all of the fighting comes from. Oh, or the L2s parasitic, oh, or all these things. And should we be charging more? Tariff, the L2s, tax the this and that, and whatever. It's because the technology is amazing. And then I stand by that. And it always has been. And I cannot be more bullish, the technology and the ethers. I've always identified and will continue to identify with the Ethereum Infinite Garden, which originally was the world computer for everyone that knows the original Vitalic videos before and after the Ether sale, right? And then this thing is the best culture and the best technology. Doesn't mean ETH will capture the actual like value, if there even is any value there to capture, right? And so my main thesis is that there's a few things that I think went wrong with Ethereum. And before we get deeply into it, one last thing I want to say for people listening to this is this is not about marketing.

Anytime I talk about this, some people are like, oh, so you just want Ethereum, the asset, to be marketed differently. No, no, no. This is actually more fundamental because

This is a socially constructed definition of the asset that causally changes what it actually is. For example,

like

If you actually get everyone in the entire planet to believe that like you, David, are the king of France, right? That's not good marketing. You literally become the king of France, right? Let's say it's like 300, 400 years ago, right? This is not good marketing. If everyone in the world believes you get to live in the palace of like Versailles, right? You get to control the entire state, you get to do X, Y, and Z causally, right? If you actually get people to socially, socially believe that you're the king of France, or more relevantly, the president of the United States, right? There was a lot of disagreement about who was the president of the United States four years ago. Like very, very relatable, right? That's not good marketing. That is not good marketing, right? Like to be able to convince people you are the president of the United States requires a whole host of coordination, a whole host of social definitions, whole host of actual people socially agreeing on a specific thing. There's no physical thing to point at. There's no president of the United States sign or something like that where you write your name on, right? But it's not marketing. It's definitely not marketing. And this is one of the main things that I'm really like passionate about to get out here because it's not a bunch of people writing blogs, right? And like everyone just giving their own opinion, right? One of the first things everyone always says, like, well, Eth is whatever you want it to be, whatever you want it to be. It's very, very schizophrenic, right? Like it's it's really crazy, right? You can't you can't that you're not the president of the United States if you want to be, right? You just can't have a bunch of people like shouting and screaming. It doesn't make it so, right? It's only a socially constructed, emergent property if a bunch of people.

Agree in an exact same structure. And then it's binary, right? It's a little bit difficult to measure exactly when it's binary. But before we discuss everything, right, I just want to make sure that this is like on the record in terms of my belief is I'm not advocating to market Ethereum differently. I'm advocating to understand the ETH asset differently, as like a universal group of pro-ETH Ethereum bulls, like Ethereum, right? And actually, to do that first, you have to like separate the Ethereum, the technology, the blockchain, the roadmap, the amazing culture with ETH the asset. So that's kind of my premise in this like background of why I started writing all of these threads and everything. Instead of, you know, most of my work is like on Fracks, Fracks USD, building out this entire full stack of money and everything that we're working on. So yeah.

Mm-hmm. Okay. So, like, just to really make sure I understand your point, we're not trying to like market what Ether is. We are trying to generate like internal Ethereum community consensus about how we understand Ether, the asset, internally, because then maybe the next step is like, okay, once we come to consensus internally, we can have better marketing. But I think what you're alluding to is like first we need to kind of figure out internally what the nature of Ether is as it relates to Ethereum, the technology. Is that what you're

That's exactly what I'm saying. It's really well said, and I hope that's clear because very few people, I think that's why I started actually branding about it, because I have a bunch of stuff to do about stable coins and fracks and all this stuff. But I'm like, I don't know whether either I am being dumb and like no one's saying it like this, or someone needs to say it so that people understand this is not just bickering over

saying?

how do we brand this stuff or like how do we market it? If we do it correctly, it will fundamentally change.

The value of this digital asset that everything here is digital, right? Like you can't eat Ethereum, right? You can't you can't build like shelter with it. It's just zeros and ones, right? Like this entire thing is socially constructed, just like how the president of the United States, the role, the title, the power that comes with socially constructed. The king of France, the role, the power, everything, socially constructed. There's no fundamental, it's not like energy, it's not like oil that you can burn it to, you know, do warmth and like build stuff with it.

It's entirely socially constructed. First, the way that you said it perfectly. And then, second, after it's socially constructed, how do you want to market this thing? Oh, this thing is like this thing is a president of the United States. Should we use it or whatever, right? Like this thing is this type of asset, that type of thing, right?

Right. Okay, so with that framework in mind, tell us the story of the collapse of ETH BTC down from the highs of 0.088 in December of 2021 to where it is now at 0.018. So like ETH versus Bitcoin has lost 80% of its value. How do you explain that story? Why did that happen? And how does that fit inside of your framework of understanding?

Yeah, so the main thing and the most important thing in my opinion is to

try to like actually look historically because Ethereum has been out since

20 2015, right? And like it transitioned to proof of stake, I believe, sometime in 2022.

September twenty twenty two.

Yes. So you can obviously see roughly where.

Or

These things changed if you overlay the price, that doesn't mean correlation is causation, right? But the main important thing from a fundamentals perspective, I'm not a trader, I don't ever trade stuff, I hold it for the very long term, is to actually learn like what happened around these times, right? And not like look at charts or anything like that. But the main thing that I've noticed is like.

The transition to proof of stake plus EIP 1559 fundamentally changed ETH, the actual asset, not the technology. I love the technology, and actually I'm very pro-proof of stake on the technology layer, but it changed ETH the asset to discounted cash flow PNE asset, where the thing that is the most predominant definition of the asset is this discussion about the cash flows that come with it with EIP 1559. Instead of actually talking about it like a commodity that's actually a good store of value, the issue is you can imagine like if you have a DCF asset, discounted cash flow, price to earnings asset, which are traditionally equities and stuff, necessarily that sort of pre-ness necessitates mutually exclusively that that asset has some properties that are made for optimizing DCF and not optimizing for it to be a commodity, such as frequent changes in the supply of the asset that makes it hard to reason about everything that actually optimizes for increasing the DCF, the discount cash flow, right? Like there's certain properties that aren't good for a DCF, like fixed, immutable, like you know, you can't ever do anything to optimize the standard cash flow. There's certain things that are really good for a commodity, and those things are obvious in the differences between like BTC and ETH assets. Now, what I actually think is there's not that many fundamental as many as people think. What I actually think is we messed up on the social definition. Instead of talking about this properly, like this is about, you know, who's the president of the United States instead of a marketing issue, right? Like I think that people didn't realize until there was there was like something actually wrong, right? And so the main thing I think is that EIP 1559 really just changed the entire definition of ETH the asset. And the other things of everyone coming up with like a really interesting, you know, this ultrasound money. And then I actually I read Ryan's new post that came out this morning, which I think is actually fantastic. It gets tons of things correctly. I think it's actually one of the best recent thesis of ETH the asset and everything that I've read. And then the Ethereal guys, you know, Vivek, Grant, Danny, Zach, they're doing God's work. I mean, they're doing Vitalic's work, right? The holy work for ETH the asset. I think they're very, very good. The issue is.

Like I said, if you have a bunch of people saying, like, this guy is the president of the United States, this guy is the president, it doesn't necessarily work, right? It's like almost like a Boolean thing, right? Like it's like all or nothing. Like if you have a bunch of people here saying, oh, Ethereum is this super duper hard thingy majig asset, like it, you know, use it. It's better than Bitcoin as a store of value. People over here are like, well, Ethereum discounted cash flow is going down, so this is super bare. Stop like even doing it. Bloomberg, ETF issuers, they write reports. They all see ETH as a discounted cash flow asset, right? And so it's like, it doesn't matter what we're saying online, right? Everyone's like analyzing the price to earnings of this asset. We would recommend you buy the BTC ETF, right? This does not comport well with what everyone wants to happen to ETH, which is a unified, it could be multiple things, by the way. Just so to be very clear, it could be multiple things, but unless it's done properly by all participants in the world, literally all kinds of stakeholders from ETF issuers to developers to and I don't know exactly, right? These are social things. I don't know exactly where that Boolean switches, right? But the difference is you either get Ethereum is nothing other than people screaming, like a bunch of definitions, or it's a lot of things that's properly constructed, right? If everyone's shouting, oh, it's ultrasound money, or it's this or that, or whatever, Ethereum is nothing. It's just chaos, right? Ethereum, the asset, is nothing. It's just a bunch of people screaming different names of US presidents. This person is the US president, that person. But if it's done properly in a properly structured, coordinated manner, it actually does make a difference. And the last thing I'll say is like, I'm not actually against EIP 1559, like the algorithm. It might sound that way. People might assume that, oh, if he's bringing up discounted cash flow, if he's saying this was like a mistake. I'm actually a big fan of proof of stake and EIP 1559. I want people to understand what we've done wrong, where I think the Ethereum community is as someone that's been involved since 2014. I think we've done wrong is EIP 1559, it just splits fees, right? Like it's just an algorithm. Again, this stuff is all social, right? It's for people that I'm sure everyone listening to this probably knows, right? It splits fees that users pay to either some gets burned or some goes to validators, right? And then I love it, it's clever, it's really smart, and obviously the amount that gets burned can't be decided by a central party, right? EIP 1559 is the algorithm, and depending on how much the blocks are full, like the previous blocks, some more gets burned or less gets sent to the validators, or more gets sent to the validators and less gets burned. That's just an algorithm. There's nothing actually about that happening that means Ethereum, the asset, needs to be thought of universally as an equity like investment in block space. In fact, the most important point is like I was like talking to Haseeb about this the other day, and he actually said it in a way that he recommended I communicated, and I think he's right, which is.

If you actually think of EIP 1559 as this like discounted cash flow, let's say like you said, like, hey, it's here, right? It exists, right? Like, how do we go about it now, right?

I actually was like, imagine if imagine a thought experiment were like.

Bitcoin BTC people actually integrated EIP 1559 or probably be BIP 1559 in Bitcoin, right? And into the Bitcoin protocol, right? Like the actual block theme model in BTC,

you wouldn't, I don't think, right? This we could go through this thought experiment, it doesn't change the supply of the 21 million, like the overall supply, right? Like, you know, the actual circulating kind of changes a little bit, right? But you would not actually see a fundamental difference in how people in the Bitcoin community.

Talk about the BTC asset, at least I contend you wouldn't, right? If you actually add it EIP 1559 to BTC, right? And like anytime someone paid like a BTC transaction, depending on how many blocks prior, whether it's really full or really empty, a little bit of it gets burned or a little more gets burned, and then the rest goes to the proof of work miners, right? You can imagine this scenario. I don't see why they want to do it. In fact, one thing, this side thing, is that doing something like that could actually help the BTC security budget because it smoothens out the value of Bitcoin as like a flows thing rather than literally half and half and half and half from the proof of work happenings. But anyway, that's a separate thing. Think of this thought experiment. If that happened, would you actually think like Michael Saylor or everyone or the BTC ETF issuers, right? They would just stop talking about the real social definition of what BTC is and be like, hey guys, let's all just model this fee burn. Let's all just talk predominantly about this fee burn and like let's everyone coordinate around defining this asset now as how much is gonna get burnt over time. And let's just stop talking about whether this is a national like store of value for like central banks, for companies, for people, right? Like looking to preserve their wealth in a totally immutable, decentralized way with zero other trust assumptions, right? Stable coins have trust assumptions, the unit they're pegged to have trust assumptions, every other governance token that actually has some kind of actual expectation on this kind of cash flow has extra trust assumptions, right? And that's good because they can optimize for DCF, right? BTC, no trust assumptions. It's totally decentralized. Ethereum, no trust assumptions, totally decentralized, right? And if you could imagine a world in which the BTC people implemented like EIP 1559, and you didn't think that they would totally change the topic to discounted cash flows and rewrite, not marketing, literally redefine the asset. It's more than marketing, like you understood really well.

Then why did we do it? Like why did Ethereum people do it? And what I mean, I think we made a mistake. This is the core point. And what Hasid was saying when I was talking to him the other day was that

If you actually go and do this, right? Like if you actually have, which we did unfortunately, where everyone started to coordinate around, hey guys, let's just keep talking nonstop about the discounted cash flow of this like burn fee mechanism thingy. What you're actually doing is you're just talking about the minimum amount of value that ETH the asset can be worth, the floor. That is always the floor, right? The burn, the discounted cash flow, it can't possibly be worth ETH the asset any less than the expected discounted cash flow of burns from the block space demand, right? And when we entirely focus on that, what we're basically saying is hey guys, ETH could be worth many, many, many times more if we concentrated on different social definitions. But let's all sit down and nonstop talk about the floor, right? Like the actual floor of Ethereum.

get the minimum valuation.

Exactly. Target the floor valuation and just keep talking about it nonstop until it finally trades at the floor. In fact, that's what I say is like if this keeps happening, ETH should fundamentally probably trade at like $500, $600, right? If you're just like looking at the expected current discounted cash flow and then extrapolate, oh, the you know, amazing burns will happen because there will be tens and tens and hundreds and hundreds of roll-ups, which I'm pro L2 Roadmap. Again, I don't talk about the technology because I have no problem with the technology, right? Like all of this stuff is downstream of this fundamental deciding who the president of the United States is not marketing. It's really not marketing because once you actually can decide this, everything else falls into place better. When you don't have this decided, everything else downstream about the technology is you will never solve it because no one actually has a proper reference of like what the actual asset is, right? In order to have L2s, they need to pay ether gas, right? And like some of it gets burned.

So that it's in every single crevice of like the ETH roadmap, right? Without actually first deciding what that thing is, right? You can't actually coherently come to an agreement. And so that's why when I separate the ETH asset, I actually really, really love the technology. I have no issue with the technology. Frackstal is currently an L2, right? It's like optimized for certain things. I would love to actually literally like have Ethereum, the asset, as its store of value. But if no one else properly thinks of ETH as the store of value, it's going to be Bitcoin, right? And so that's kind of my overall thesis. And that's how I'm trying to get people to start actually talking about it. Less about marketing, less about trading, more about fundamentals.

When Ethereum shifted to proof of stake, there's been a bunch of Bitcoin or tweets that have cropped up on my feed jeering uh the ETH BTC decline since Ethereum moved to proof of stake, and they're using this moment in time of Ethereum shift from proof of work, abandoning proof of work, going to proof of stake, and then ETH BTC has been down 80% ever since Ethereum abandoned proof of work. And so they're kind of beating their chests as a way to like validate the legitimacy of proof of work, which I decline that reality. Like ETHBTC is not down 80% because proof of work is inherently valuable, but they're just pattern matching to kind of like validate their understanding that proof of work is like the core thing that makes Bitcoin run, in addition to the 21 million hard cap. What you're saying is that when Ethereum did go from proof of work to proof of stake, we moved the attentional focus point away from a commodity store of value asset towards a DCF model. And so maybe it actually was the transition, according to like what you're believing. It was the transition proof from proof of work to proof of stake. Has nothing to do with proof of work. There's no reason why proof of work is like bullish. And of course, I think if you believe in proof of stake, you actually understand that proof of work is actually bearish because it's constant selling pressure. But the bearish side of proof of stake, according to what you're saying, is that it's moving towards social consensus focus point on revenues as the thing to like beat our chest about. And then of course, when revenues dropped to zero, that anchor just got lower and lower and lower. That anchor point got lower and lower and lower to the point where you're saying, well, if we continue to value ether the asset as a DCF model, we come out to like a $500 ETH valuation. And this is where people in the Ethereum community are talking about like, oh, well, Ethereum, the technology can work at a $500 ETH. Like everything is going to keep on working just fine because the community consensus has pointed around a DCF model as the way to value ETH. So that's like the synthesis of like my understanding of your conversation. And I understand that perspective. I don't think there's anything that I disagree with. But here is what I want you to address next. Ethereum will always have revenue. Like we like EIP 1559. There is revenue at the layer one. I hope actually that we actually increase revenue. I want the Ethereum Foundation and the Ethereum product mindset to instill, you know, starting now and over the next years, and really think about the layer one as a product and a measure of success of the Ethereum products is our revenues go up. And so, as a construct, as a technology, Ethereum will have revenues. And so I don't think it's

Possible to just like ignore the existence of Ethereum revenues. The DCF model or the fact that Ethereum has revenue in the first place will always exist. There will always be something to focus on. Now, I think we can talk about how maybe we should emphasize the commodity-esque side of ETH, but nonetheless, we are not getting rid of revenues. No one is suggesting that. You're not suggesting that. And so we will always have to contend nonetheless with the existence of revenues. We can't really like sweep it under the rug. So how do you balance this idea of we want Ether to be a commodity like asset with commodity like valuations? But on the other side of the spectrum, it is also a revenue bearing technology platform. It is a revenue like tech stock that is a valid perspective. Whether it's the right perspective or the wrong perspective, I think is social consensus, but it is a valid perspective. So how do you contend with this?

Yeah, that's a really big point. And to actually directly agree with you

I do not think proof of stake was a mistake. I do not think EIP 1559 was a mistake. In fact, that's why I kind of constructed this thought experiment of imagine if BTC

like integrated EIP1. It's just a fee algorithm, right? Like it's literally just

Technology.

Yeah, but in fact, a lot of people bring up the security budget. And I know this isn't to talk about the Bitcoin security budget and stuff. But I actually think implementing EIP 1559 in Bitcoin actually is one possible solution. There has to be a lot of research done to fixing the BTC security budget because it smoothens out the actual demand for BTC, the floor demand. And so it's not just happenings, right? Like you can actually bring value back to the BTC asset as a function of discounted cash flows from demand from block space. Anyway, so I think that the main issue is those things aren't the problem. And I've actually said like the superpower with proof of work is not that it's more decentralized. I don't believe that or whatever, but the superpower is you can't coherently talk about discounted cash flows in proof of work. This pitfall doesn't exist, which is why the BTC people have beautifully navigated it, whether you know it's by accident or not, there was no like landmine to step on, right? The BTC token holders do not actually have any claims on any DCF, any burns, right? And like this is why I was saying in a thought experiment, if you imagine they do, they could make a mistake, like the Ethereans, but they probably won't because they're so well trained on not actually bringing up DCF, even though functionally, even though functionally you can imagine a world where BTC has BIT 1559, right? And so my answer to you is like, let's look at gold, right? Imagine a world where like there was an industrial use case of gold that like somehow turned it into lead. It took it out of supply permit, changed its molecular makeup, or even better, there's oil, right? When you use it, it literally changes its molecular makeup, right?

you would not say the gold asset has

Discounted cash flows. Like taking the gold out of circulation does not mean like atomically, like out of this universe, right? Like reverse alchemy doesn't mean the gold asset has fundamentally changed its definition. Not marketing, remember, this is more fundamental than marketing, right? You would not say the gold asset is now a discounted cash flow price to earnings asset, right? That wouldn't make sense. You say there's this new industrial use case of gold, which is really interesting, right? Where if you code it on the special circuit board or something, it somehow turns it into lead. They're like you can never change it back to gold unless you know we discover real alchemy, right?

And

that is, I think, the right way to think about it because I'm not saying roll back EIP1559. I'm not saying to go back to it, and I'm not saying it's permanently a big mistake, because if Ethereum actually accidentally went this way, you can think it could on purpose go the other way.

So I'm not saying this is like, oh, it's over, it's like, you know, all this stuff, which is why I've actually like tried to bring this conversation into discourse. Because if you can accidentally

It's the point of this episode as well.