Ether is trading at around half its all-time high price, but the Ethereum network is still valued higher than some of the world’s most prominent companies.
Ether (ETH) traded at roughly $2,088 at the time of writing amid continued exchange-traded fund (ETF) outflows, down over 57% from its all-time high of nearly $4,900 set in mid-November 2021, according to CoinMarketCap data.
Despite this decline, Ethereum maintains a market capitalization of nearly $252 billion, surpassing global corporations such as Toyota ($250 billion) and the total market value of the precious metal platinum ($245 billion).
Other notable companies currently worth less than the Ethereum network include IBM, McDonald’s, General Electric, Shell and Disney. If Ethereum were a company, it would be the fiftieth largest in the world, just behind Nestlé, with its market capitalization of nearly $256 billion.
Alex Obchakevich, founder of Obchakevich Research, told Cointelegraph that speculative interest significantly contributes to Ethereum’s valuation, as well as its “freedom from the financial framework of traditional finance.” He added:
“Ethereum is about the future, about new financial technologies and solutions. The project is still very young and attracts many new and young investors who are ready to take risks. I believe that the average Zoomer will choose Ethereum for investment rather than Toyota or IBM shares.”
Flavio Bianchi, a Polkadot ambassador and the chief marketing officer of the decentralized fundraising platform Polimec, told Cointelegraph that the comparison is less insightful than it might appear at first. He highlighted that “Ethereum isn’t a business” — it’s infrastructure. He explained:
“Its value doesn’t come solely from revenue or profit but from usage and belief in its future role. It enables people to build, transact, issue assets and coordinate without intermediaries.”
Obchakevich also suggested Ethereum became more attractive after it transitioned to proof-of-stake (PoS), reinforcing “its value as a deflationary asset with growth potential in the digital economy.”
Related: ETH may reclaim $2.2K ‘macro range’ amid growing whale accumulation
Is Ethereum a deflationary asset?
Recent data from Ultra Sound Money shows that Ethereum is inflationary again, with an annual inflation rate of about 0.73% over the past 30 days.
The rate of inflation or deflation is largely dependent on the ETH fees burned by the network and the amount of newly issued Ether. Fees have been burned on the network since the implementation of EIP-1559 in 2021, which, paired with decreased issuance after the PoS transition, resulted in Ethereum being deflationary during sustained network activity.
IntoTheBlock data shows that on March 23, daily fees on Ethereum fell to a little over $337,000, the lowest value reported since June 2020. YCharts also shows that on March 23, there was only 118.67 ETH worth of fees, the lowest value reported this year.
Ethereum network transaction fees per day. Source: YCharts
Over the past 24 hours, ETH’s value rose nearly 3.5%, increasing its market capitalization by about $9.3 billion, now totaling approximately $252.1 billion. For comparison, this figure exceeds Greece’s gross domestic product (GDP), currently around $243.5 billion.
Related: Ethereum eyes 65% gains from ‘cycle bottom’ as BlackRock ETH stash crosses $1B
Obchakevich highlighted that other than being worth more than Greece’s GDP, Ethereum’s market cap is also higher than the GDP of countries such as Slovenia and Croatia combined. He said this is more than a curious factoid:
“For institutional investors, it is a sign of legitimacy. Ethereum is valued for smart contracts, and DeFi has a TVL [total value locked] of over $124 billion, seeing it not only as speculation but as the infrastructure of the future.”
Pradeep Singh, CEO of enterprise privacy and security infrastructure firm Gateway FM, told Cointelegraph that these numbers reflect “a fundamental shift in how we value digital infrastructure”:
“What we’re witnessing is a growing recognition that significant portions of the global economy will eventually migrate to this infrastructure. Ethereum’s market capitalization is essentially pricing in its future role as the settlement layer for everything from financial services to supply chain management.”
The Ethereum protocol continues to evolve as developers introduce innovations such as native rollups, further expanding the blockchain’s capabilities and potential use cases.
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Cointelegraph by Adrian Zmudzinski