Bitwise finds Ethereum price is being driven more by user activity and capital flows than by network revenue.
Max Shannon, a senior research analyst at crypto asset manager Bitwise Asset Management, is pushing back on how people try to explain the Ethereum price, and says most are looking at it the wrong way.
In a detailed X article on April 23, Shannon argued that Ethereum isn’t really a stock, even if it sometimes behaves like one. He instead compares it to a commodity. In his view, Ethereum is closer to “digital oil,” where usage, scarcity and network strength matter more than revenue.
Read also: Top 5 Wild Ethereum Price Predictions for 2026: From Realistic to Moonshot Scenarios
Why Ethereum Price Doesn’t Behave Like a Stock
As Shannon explains, ETH▼$1,573.86 is “best understood primarily as a novel commodity-like network,” not a traditional equity.
The analyst argues that ETH holders don’t have legal claims on profits, adding that revenues are “not a primary driver of price today.” That makes revenue-based models “insufficient and unreliable.”
Instead, he points to other drivers. Shannon says “more influential factors include active addresses,” along with U.S. financial conditions and ETP inflows. He adds that value comes from “network effects, security, and decentralisation.”
How Bitwise Values Ethereum
Instead of earnings, Bitwise splits Ethereum’s value into two parts. There is a hard “floor” and a softer market premium.
- The floor comes from “cost to corrupt.” This is the amount of money it would take to attack the network. In other words, it reflects how much capital is needed to realistically try to break the system.
Shannon says that floor is now around $152 billion, which is about 58% of Ethereum’s total valuation. The network is also securing roughly $250 billion in on-chain assets, which helps explain why that base matters.
Everything above that comes down to sentiment. The current premium is about 70% above the floor, so that is still low compared to past cycles, when it went above four times the base value, Shannon claims.
Looking across a broader set of indicators, Bitwise places Ethereum closer to the lower end of its historical valuation range rather than near past highs.
That’s up from near the lower end seen in April 2025 and again in early 2026, suggesting some recovery but still far from overheated levels.
Read more: Etherealize Lowers Ethereum Price Target to $250,000
