After 11 years of experimentation, Vitalik Buterin has finally realized: Is the ultimate goal of cryptocurrencies still value storage? Bitcoin has always told one story: digital gold, a store of value. Ethereum, over the past 11 years, has tried to bring the entire financial system on-chain, from world computing and DeFi to NFTs, L2, and settlement layers. But today, Vitalik suddenly stated clearly: ETH should no longer use transaction fee burning as its core value narrative. Even if the ETH burned in the future is insufficient to offset 10% of the new supply, there's no need to be upset. ETH should focus on value storage. Why? Because Vitalik discovered that in a bull market, everyone is frantically trading cryptocurrencies, transaction fees skyrocket, and the more ETH is burned, the more valuable it appears. But in a bear market, transaction demand and burning disappear together. Valuing ETH based on this kind of revenue is tantamount to expecting the market to be perpetually insane. If high gas fees are deliberately pursued to make ETH more valuable, it may ultimately drive away users. Now Vitalik Buterin wants to try a different path: Ethereum will continue to handle settlement, asset issuance, and on-chain finance, while ETH will strive to become an asset that people are willing to hold long-term, relying on security, decentralization, censorship resistance, and long-term stability. But there's an unavoidable question: Bitcoin has already captured the mindset of digital gold; why should ETH command a value store premium? Holding trillions of dollars worth of assets on Ethereum is completely different from ETH itself being worth trillions of dollars. The more prosperous stablecoins, RWA, and on-chain finance become, the more value ETH holders will necessarily receive. Ultimately, Vitalik Buterin has brought ETH's most difficult question back to the table: Ethereum can be very successful, but why must ETH be very expensive? Eleven years later, Bitcoin is still telling its original story, while Ethereum is beginning to rediscover reasons for long-term holding. This contrast is more interesting than any technology roadmap.