Ethereum’s Biggest Mistake (and How to Fix It) | Sam Kazemian
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If we don't make sure that Ethereum is used as 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 Bankless, where we explore the frontier of Internet money and Internet finance. Today on Bankless, 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 ether are not new, but the one you are going to hear today from Sam Kazemi and pitches a specific and different path for the conversation around ETH and 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,
it's a pleasure, David. Thanks for having 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 ETHBTC 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 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
So first of all, I wanna 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 Mhmm. 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 and fact that's because of the history that I talk about this. And so the first thing I actually just wanna say is there's basically two types of ways to essentially value an asset. Okay? And ther
cash flows. Yeah.
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. 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 value and hold it in volts, etcetera, etcetera. R
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 in as it relates to Ethereum and the technology. Is that what you're saying?
That's exactly what I'm saying. It's really well said, and I hope that's clear because very few people, I think Mhmm. That's why I started actually bragging about it because I have a bunch of stuff to do about stablecoins and and fracs 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 p
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