# Ethereum & wealth effect

Source: https://xcancel.com/sassal0x/status/1915559116904554682
Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Ethereum-and-wealth-effect?index=0x680b6ef5fc3b9153457a19b3d845efa62a33f3f858d574496367d59135853dd9b86c3a54
Submitted by macbudkowski.eth on 2025-04-25 UTC, 2 upvotes, 0 comments

## Summary

The author argues that Ethereum's value drivers have historically come from "wealth effects," but that a lasting chain needs non-speculative use cases, and that Ethereum is working toward them. The piece says ETH rose from $10 to $1,400 in about 12 months in 2017, driven by ICOs, and from $80 to $4,900 in 2020/2021, driven by DeFi summer and NFTs. In 2023/2024, it says the wealth effect went to Solana instead, where SOL bottomed at a $5 billion market cap while ETH bottomed at a $100 billion market cap ($880). It names non-casino DeFi, real-world asset tokenization, TradFi integrations and non-DeFi apps as sustainable drivers.

## Article

I think one of the biggest value drivers for layer 1 chains that is not talked about very often is the "wealth effect" that they can experience.

In 2017, Ethereum had a huge wealth effect that was driven by ICOs which sent ETH from $10 to $1400 in ~12 months. You needed to buy ETH to participate in ICOs and then you'd trade the ICO tokens for more ETH and repeat this until the bear market hit.

In 2020/2021, Ethereum experienced a similar wealth effect driven by DeFi summer and NFTs that sent ETH from $80 to $4900. You used ETH in DeFi protocols to farm tokens which you'd then sell for more ETH and you needed ETH to trade NFTs.

In 2023/2024, Ethereum did not experience this same wealth effect as ETH bottomed at a $100 billion market cap ($880) and did not capture the new speculative meta (memecoins). Instead, the wealth effect happened on Solana as SOL bottomed at a $5 billion market cap and you needed SOL to trade memecoins.

In saying this, the wealth effect phenomenon is not a long-term activity driver for chains - we've seen this with the many L1's that did relatively well in 2021 and then died off completely once the money/wealth effect ran out.

To cross into a more sustainable activity paradigm, a chain must capture real and lasting value drivers that do not solely rely on speculation. I think this comes in the form of non-casino DeFi, real-world asset tokenization, TradFi integrations and various non-DeFi apps (social networks, onchain games etc).

I believe that Ethereum is in the process of crossing into this world but it's not an easy task and there are, of course, a lot of other ecosystems competing for this as they are aware that the casino can only get you so far.

Essentially, a bet on Ethereum and ETH at this point is a bet on Ethereum capturing the vast majority of long-term sustainable use-cases/value drivers that do not rely on a wealth effect. From everything that I've seen, I think Ethereum still has the best chance to win this, but we mustn't rest on our laurels - we must keep building and scaling.