Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin has argued that ETH could serve as a stronger store of value than gold or Bitcoin as inflation and economic volatility rise, pointing to the asset's monetary design and the network's utility rather than to price forecasts.
In a post on X dated November 11, 2026, Lubin warned that nation-state currencies and other assets could lose purchasing power during periods of heightened instability. He described gold and Bitcoin as established stores of value but said ETH offers additional monetary and utility features, including censorship resistance, programmable transactions, collateral use and Ethereum's role in stablecoin activity.
Monetary Design and Censorship Resistance
Lubin's argument begins with ETH's monetary structure. He said ETH, like gold and Bitcoin, is not debt-based or credit-based money. He also highlighted Ethereum's resistance to censorship, stating that transactions on the layer 1 network cannot be blocked, whether they are simple payments or complex decentralized finance applications.
According to Lubin, valid transactions are guaranteed to execute regardless of size, from one dollar to billions, and he described Ethereum as cheap and easy to use at any scale. He further characterized ETH as disinflationary, noting that periods of high network activity can push its supply into deflationary territory. He also said ETH is relatively inexpensive to hold and secure, a quality he said could matter to users seeking assets they can store and use across different market conditions.
Lubin acknowledged that these characteristics do not guarantee that ETH's market price will rise.
Utility as a Monetary Backstop
Beyond scarcity, Lubin's thesis rests on Ethereum's expanding economic activity. He described ETH as useful across decentralized finance, stablecoins and smart-contract-based business processes, and said Ethereum hosts the bulk of stablecoin activity.
He expects finance, and eventually other industries, to move more activity onchain. In that framework, stablecoins serve as payment money and units of account, while ETH supports applications and collateral arrangements. Lubin argued that collateral becomes more powerful when the asset backing agreements can grow in value, though he framed that as a thesis rather than a guaranteed outcome for borrowers or investors.
He also emphasized programmability, which lets developers attach logic to transactions so that smart contracts can automate agreements, payments and business processes. Lubin linked this capability to a future economy involving both people and machine intelligence.
Privacy, Transparency and a Safety Timeline
Lubin's post also addressed privacy and transparency, stating that Ethereum-based financial instruments can be public or private while remaining selectively disclosable and auditable. He cited tools including Railgun, stealth addresses, privacy pools and zero-knowledge proofs.
He said he expects Ethereum's base layer and modular layer-2 networks to support more high-value transactions and agreements. Lubin also predicted that ETH would become quantum-safe and AI-safe money by the end of 2027 or partway through 2028, but his post did not provide technical details supporting that timeline.
The central point, according to Lubin, is that ETH is more than a scarce digital asset: its monetary properties and Ethereum's utility could reinforce each other as onchain activity expands. Whether that translates into lasting price appreciation, he indicated, will depend on adoption, network activity and market demand.
