Ethereum Co-Founder Lubin Makes the Case for ETH Over Bitcoin and Gold

Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin argued on Wednesday that ETH is a functionally superior store of value to both Bitcoin and gold for preserving capital through macroeconomic volatility. He laid out the case in a post on X, listing 12 operational attributes he says put the network's native asset ahead of the two incumbent assets.

Lubin's core claim rests on structure, not marketing. He wrote that ETH does not depend on debt structures or state-backed credit, which puts it closer to traditional commodities than to sovereign money. His tweet was blunt about timing: "We are almost certainly heading into a period of high inflation and extreme economic and social volatility."

What are the 12 properties Lubin cited?

The full list runs to a dozen operational attributes, and the source highlights several of them:

• Base-layer (Layer 1) censorship resistance for ETH transactions
• Significantly lower barriers to secure custody and transfers at any economic scale
• A valid on-chain transaction executes regardless of whether it settles one dollar or billions
• Productive collateral status within decentralized finance (DeFi)
• The highest issuance and settlement volume for fiat-pegged stablecoins of any chain

Lubin also framed Ethereum as the settlement backbone for future corporate workflows and hybrid operating models that combine humans with artificial intelligence systems. That's a utility argument Bitcoin and gold can't match, in his telling.

Is ETH actually disinflationary?

Lubin characterized ETH as a disinflationary asset under standard market conditions. The term matters here: it describes a declining net issuance rate, not a continuous reduction in the absolute circulating supply. Industry sources cited in press reporting say true deflationary conditions depend strictly on sustained periods of elevated demand on the base layer.

The supply debate has an internal critic, too. On November 8, Vitalik Buterin said on social media that over-prioritizing the EIP-1559 transaction fee burning mechanism could incentivize corporate behaviors that compromise decentralization. Buterin's position is that network stability and resilience against external capture must take precedence over maximizing fee revenue. It's a direct tension with the economic narrative Lubin is promoting, and it's happening inside the same founding circle.

What does the quantum timeline look like?

Lubin projected that Ethereum will achieve quantum resistance between 2027 and 2028. The Ethereum Foundation's documentation is slightly more conservative: the Foundation formalized a dedicated post-quantum research team in January 2026 and targets completion of core infrastructure around 2029, under a technical roadmap subject to ongoing peer review.

The roadmap also continues to evaluate the rollout of Forward Inclusion Lists (FOCIL) at the consensus layer, with post-quantum milestones scheduled by core developers for the end of the decade.

Who is still buying?

Market performance tells a different story than the fundamentals. On November 9, 2026, ETH traded around $2,118.49, down 41% year over year.

Institutional accumulation hasn't stopped, though. BitMine Immersion Technologies reported holdings of 6,070,092 ETH as of November 8, 2026 — approximately 4.97% of circulating supply. The company has run a consistent ETH accumulation program since June 2025 and has deployed more than 86% of its balance into network validators to generate staking yield.

What happens next?

Lubin's thesis now has to survive both the market and the roadmap. The post-quantum research team's 2029 infrastructure target and the FOCIL consensus-layer evaluation are the concrete milestones to watch, and Buterin's pushback on fee-burning priorities guarantees the supply narrative stays contested among core developers through that window.