Bitmine chairman Thomas “Tom” Lee described comments he attributed to Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin at Devcon 8 in Mumbai as a “seismic shift” in ETH’s positioning, according to a BlockBeats report published on November 9, 2026, at 21:38:45 UTC+8.
According to Lee’s account, Buterin declared that “ETH is a store of value; ETH is money.” Lee argued that this framing clarified how ETH would capture value in what he described as an approaching tokenization and AI “supercycle.”
The collateral narrative
Lee contrasted ETH with what he called the “cash flow” token models of HYPE and LIT. He instead characterized ETH as “pure and trusted collateral,” linking that role to his view that Ethereum would be the Layer 1 chosen by the vast majority of financial institutions moving assets onto blockchains.
In Lee’s assessment, a store-of-value role best fits both Ethereum’s future roadmap and the role he expects ETH to play in a tokenization supercycle.
What the report establishes—and what it does not
The brief documents Lee’s investment narrative, rather than evidence that the predicted adoption or value capture has occurred. It provides no institutional adoption figures or supporting data for the anticipated tokenization and AI supercycle. Buterin’s remarks are also presented through Lee’s account, not a separate transcript supplied with the report.
The distinction is important: positioning ETH as trusted collateral is a thesis about its future role, not proof of the scale of demand that role will generate.