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The most valuable things in an economy are often the hardest to price. In the 1990s, the business world misjudged the Internet. That wasn’t due to a lack of imagination. It was a lack of the right framework. Analysts tried to value the Internet by tallying up companies like AOL, Yahoo, and Netscape, without realizing the deeper significance of the open public infrastructure beneath them. The visible companies were easy to price. The invisible protocols powering the system were not.
In those same early days of the web, the market could price a modem, but it couldn't price the ability to send an email to anyone on earth for free. Today, the market can price a token, but it seems unable to price the "trust dividend": the ability to transfer value, settle agreements, and enforce ownership without a centralized intermediary.
Today, we’re repeating those mistakes with Ethereum, the emerging programmable settlement protocol layer, often described as a blockchain. But Ethereum is not just a blockchain; it is the infrastructure for a high-trust, low-friction economy, and right now, that infrastructure is trading at a massive discount to its true value.
Share Dialog
The most valuable things in an economy are often the hardest to price. In the 1990s, the business world misjudged the Internet. That wasn’t due to a lack of imagination. It was a lack of the right framework. Analysts tried to value the Internet by tallying up companies like AOL, Yahoo, and Netscape, without realizing the deeper significance of the open public infrastructure beneath them. The visible companies were easy to price. The invisible protocols powering the system were not.
In those same early days of the web, the market could price a modem, but it couldn't price the ability to send an email to anyone on earth for free. Today, the market can price a token, but it seems unable to price the "trust dividend": the ability to transfer value, settle agreements, and enforce ownership without a centralized intermediary.
Today, we’re repeating those mistakes with Ethereum, the emerging programmable settlement protocol layer, often described as a blockchain. But Ethereum is not just a blockchain; it is the infrastructure for a high-trust, low-friction economy, and right now, that infrastructure is trading at a massive discount to its true value.
Most people know Bitcoin’s position, but still categorize Ethereum as a cryptocurrency or one blockchain among many. In reality, Ethereum is emerging as the next foundational layer of the Internet, this time not for information, but for value and trust. And once again, the market is underestimating what this new public layer will become.
To understand Ethereum’s significance, it’s worth remembering what the Internet actually did. It did not invent content, commerce, or communication. It created the open, neutral foundation that allowed anyone to build them. Its greatest contribution was permissionless innovation.
Ethereum serves the same role, but in the digital economic realm. It makes value move the way the Internet made information move. It enables digital assets, payments, ownership records, and agreements to operate in a common environment without the layers of middlemen that normally enforce trust.
If the Internet produced universal communication, Ethereum produces universal economic coordination. That shift will reshape markets far more profoundly than most people realize.
Just as no one thinks about TCP/IP when browsing online, few users will think about Ethereum when sending stablecoins or interacting with tokenized assets. Yet Ethereum is now quietly settling trillions of dollars each year. Stablecoins alone now move value at a pace that rivals or exceeds traditional payment networks, and most of this activity relies on Ethereum’s architecture.
This is precisely how the Internet grew: quietly, invisibly, beneath more recognizable brands and business models. In the 1990s, investors priced dot-com companies but barely understood the public protocols that enabled the entire digital economy. Ethereum today is trapped in this same narrative gap.
The core misunderstanding is simple: Ethereum is not a business and does not behave like one. It has no central human management, no revenue maximization strategy, and no shareholders. It functions as a public good, more like a global settlement network or a public registry than a tech company.
Public infrastructure almost always looks undervalued in its early decades. The Internet’s protocols captured almost none of the trillions in value created above them. Electricity grids never captured the value of the industrial economy they enabled. Highways never captured the value of national commerce. Ethereum is the same: it enables far more economic activity than it directly monetizes.
This is why traditional metrics, fees, token price, and transaction counts are such poor indicators of Ethereum’s long-run importance. They measure the toll booth, not the economy.
Eventually, scholars analyzing the Internet realized its biggest economic impact wasn’t revenue but surplus: the enormous benefit users gained from open access. Ethereum offers a similar, but often overlooked, benefit: it reduces the cost of trust.
Because Ethereum settles transactions, validates ownership, and enforces agreements transparently and automatically, it reduces enormous operational costs across finance and commerce. Everything from compliance to reconciliation to fraud management becomes cheaper when the underlying infrastructure is shared, standardized, and verifiable.
Businesses aren’t adopting Ethereum because they want to “use blockchain.” They’re adopting it because it lowers friction. It introduces reliability. It reduces counterparty risk. It enables automation. And it offers a global settlement environment that no company controls, and no jurisdiction can unilaterally dictate.
This trust dividend, even though it hardly shows up in Ethereum’s own revenues, is where the real macro-level value lies.
The global economy is becoming more digital, tokenized, and machine-driven. Companies are issuing tokenized funds, running digital treasuries, exploring automated financial workflows, and using stablecoins for global transactions. AI agents are beginning to interact directly with digital assets. All of these activities require a neutral settlement layer, one that is programmable, borderless, and reliable.
That layer is Ethereum.
Just as the Internet created the conditions for modern communication, Ethereum is creating the conditions for programmable global value exchange. It is not competing with payment apps or financial platforms. It is enabling an entirely new category of economic infrastructure.
It took decades for the world to understand the true importance of the Internet’s public infrastructure. By the time the significance was clear, the transformation was already complete.
Ethereum is following a similar trajectory, but this time, the infrastructure itself is investable. This is not a “crypto trend” but the emergence of a new, durable layer of the global economy.
The businesses and institutions that recognize Ethereum not as a product, but as the next Internet layer, will be the ones shaping the next era of digital business.
Note: To further understand this viewpoint, please read my research on valuing Ethereum like a public good infrastructure.
Most people know Bitcoin’s position, but still categorize Ethereum as a cryptocurrency or one blockchain among many. In reality, Ethereum is emerging as the next foundational layer of the Internet, this time not for information, but for value and trust. And once again, the market is underestimating what this new public layer will become.
To understand Ethereum’s significance, it’s worth remembering what the Internet actually did. It did not invent content, commerce, or communication. It created the open, neutral foundation that allowed anyone to build them. Its greatest contribution was permissionless innovation.
Ethereum serves the same role, but in the digital economic realm. It makes value move the way the Internet made information move. It enables digital assets, payments, ownership records, and agreements to operate in a common environment without the layers of middlemen that normally enforce trust.
If the Internet produced universal communication, Ethereum produces universal economic coordination. That shift will reshape markets far more profoundly than most people realize.
Just as no one thinks about TCP/IP when browsing online, few users will think about Ethereum when sending stablecoins or interacting with tokenized assets. Yet Ethereum is now quietly settling trillions of dollars each year. Stablecoins alone now move value at a pace that rivals or exceeds traditional payment networks, and most of this activity relies on Ethereum’s architecture.
This is precisely how the Internet grew: quietly, invisibly, beneath more recognizable brands and business models. In the 1990s, investors priced dot-com companies but barely understood the public protocols that enabled the entire digital economy. Ethereum today is trapped in this same narrative gap.
The core misunderstanding is simple: Ethereum is not a business and does not behave like one. It has no central human management, no revenue maximization strategy, and no shareholders. It functions as a public good, more like a global settlement network or a public registry than a tech company.
Public infrastructure almost always looks undervalued in its early decades. The Internet’s protocols captured almost none of the trillions in value created above them. Electricity grids never captured the value of the industrial economy they enabled. Highways never captured the value of national commerce. Ethereum is the same: it enables far more economic activity than it directly monetizes.
This is why traditional metrics, fees, token price, and transaction counts are such poor indicators of Ethereum’s long-run importance. They measure the toll booth, not the economy.
Eventually, scholars analyzing the Internet realized its biggest economic impact wasn’t revenue but surplus: the enormous benefit users gained from open access. Ethereum offers a similar, but often overlooked, benefit: it reduces the cost of trust.
Because Ethereum settles transactions, validates ownership, and enforces agreements transparently and automatically, it reduces enormous operational costs across finance and commerce. Everything from compliance to reconciliation to fraud management becomes cheaper when the underlying infrastructure is shared, standardized, and verifiable.
Businesses aren’t adopting Ethereum because they want to “use blockchain.” They’re adopting it because it lowers friction. It introduces reliability. It reduces counterparty risk. It enables automation. And it offers a global settlement environment that no company controls, and no jurisdiction can unilaterally dictate.
This trust dividend, even though it hardly shows up in Ethereum’s own revenues, is where the real macro-level value lies.
The global economy is becoming more digital, tokenized, and machine-driven. Companies are issuing tokenized funds, running digital treasuries, exploring automated financial workflows, and using stablecoins for global transactions. AI agents are beginning to interact directly with digital assets. All of these activities require a neutral settlement layer, one that is programmable, borderless, and reliable.
That layer is Ethereum.
Just as the Internet created the conditions for modern communication, Ethereum is creating the conditions for programmable global value exchange. It is not competing with payment apps or financial platforms. It is enabling an entirely new category of economic infrastructure.
It took decades for the world to understand the true importance of the Internet’s public infrastructure. By the time the significance was clear, the transformation was already complete.
Ethereum is following a similar trajectory, but this time, the infrastructure itself is investable. This is not a “crypto trend” but the emergence of a new, durable layer of the global economy.
The businesses and institutions that recognize Ethereum not as a product, but as the next Internet layer, will be the ones shaping the next era of digital business.
Note: To further understand this viewpoint, please read my research on valuing Ethereum like a public good infrastructure.
William Mougayar's Blog
William Mougayar's Blog
1 comment
https://wamougayar.xyz/valuing-the-digital-trust-dividend How the market is missing Ethereum's role as economic infrastructure, not just another blockchain