Syncracy Capital co-founders Legendary Cyberphunk Nick Szabo and Ryan Watkins have laid out a conflicting framework for understanding Ethereum’s rally and its evaluation mechanics in X’s posts.
Ethereum prices have nothing to do with the utility
Szabo’s core claims are harsh. “The fundamental problem with ETH valuation is that the main use case of Ethereum is largely external to ETH’s market value.” In his view, Ethereum can be “very useful,” and its application “can collect large revenues,” but “ETH is still low priced or vice versa, but there is little link between them.”
He says this in contrast to Bitcoin, “the main use case is the value store, which is strongly linked to price,” and says, “ETH cannot mimic it, as the basic design of Bitcoin is much more suitable for this use case. In the case of Szabo, the core is structural. Ethereum utilities do not certainly translate into value capture by ETH, but Bitcoin’s purpose and price are intertwined by design.
Szabo’s statement, returning to X in late September 2025 after five years of absence, came in response to Watkins’ A. Researchers go out into the market from opposite angles, claiming that prices and narratives lift heavy things while investors routinely overengineer the engineering layer-1 valuation model. “And again and again, people are overthinking the ratings of L1,” he wrote, framing the final leg of ETH intensity as a narrative pivot rather than a breakthrough in the spreadsheet.
Why has ETH prices tripled since April?
“The only difference between the $1,400 and $5,000 ETH was Bitmine.” In April, he says, “Ethereum was a dying platform.” Today, “It’s the stub coin chain and the next “bitcoin-like” institutional opportunity. “The lessons he drew are dull: “Price guides the story.
Importantly, Watkins does not argue that these stories are justified. He emphasizes the vacuum they filled. “The point here is not whether any of this is justified. The point is that the lack of agreed evaluation methodology creates a blank that can only be met by the narrative and relative framework.”
He emerges the competing bull case as an open hypothesis, not as a belief.
That uncertainty, he says, is pushing the market to lock itself into simple comparisons and flows. “So what happens when the market instead fixes its relative value and narrative? Metric.”
He dismisses these as “doofy” exercises, but they help with navigation. “We can theorize everything we want or navigate the environment in front of us,” until the fundamentals reaffirm “Don’t think about it again.” At his closing line he clearly defines the edge. “Assets that permeate mainstream consciousness and last over time have a great competitive advantage: a game of flow and storytelling until the party stops.”
Both views may apply at once. The market may continue to price ETH primarily through narrative and relative value, but the questions raised by Szabo (whether Ethereum’s design is a stiff, durable link between network utilities and token values) remain unanswered. For now, the discussion itself is a signal. ETH is moving through cycles where the recognition of the objective is set tone, not just measurable cash flow analog.
At the time of pressing, ETH traded for $4,701.92.
Featured images created with dall.e, charts on tradingview.com
