Why did I sell all my ETH? The Ethereum network is getting more and more impressive, but ETH might not keep rising enough to match that level of awesomeness. Back then, the market believed: Ethereum would dominate the entire blockchain world. All value would eventually flow back to ETH. ETH would become the global currency of the internet era. Looking back now, that narrative doesn’t hold up. Because at its core, Ethereum is a system that helps others make money. L2s make money. Stablecoins make money. Apps make money. On-chain finance makes money. Ethereum provides the foundational security and settlement layer, and then opens it up to everyone almost at cost. It’s like public infrastructure, like open-source internet protocols, like highways. Highways are important, but toll booths aren’t necessarily the most profitable. That’s the problem with ETH right now. The more successful Ethereum becomes, it doesn’t necessarily mean ETH becomes more valuable. Especially in the Rollup era, most of the profits are being taken by L2s and the application layer. ETH is more like fuel and a reserve asset within the system, but it’s no longer the black hole that absorbs value from the entire industry. And here’s the most brutal truth: Crypto’s real success isn’t de-dollarization, it’s on-chain dollarization. Ethereum’s biggest achievement right now is helping dollar stablecoins expand. USDT and USDC are growing like crazy on Ethereum, and the U.S. government is even starting to actively support stablecoins, because at their core, they strengthen dollar hegemony. A lot of people bought ETH back in the day thinking it would overthrow the dollar. But in the end, Ethereum became the dollar’s strongest outsourcing partner. The Ethereum network is like a great highway, but the ETH toll booth isn’t making that much money. That’s the situation right now.