"Cyberpunk currency," why do I continue to hold ETH?

If Ethereum maintains trustless neutrality, inclusive trustworthiness, and remains economically coupled with its layer-2 solutions, then ETH’s value is not just based on people’s belief in it.

Written by: _gabrielShapir0

Translated by: AididiaoJP, Foresight News

Thoughts on ETH

Lately, I’ve been seriously contemplating ETH—why do I hold it? Do I want to keep holding it? Why do I believe it has value?

From friends and colleagues, I hear three main perspectives on ETH:

• “Bitcoin Plus” — a store of value against currency devaluation, but “better” because:
  • It can deflate when needed, inflate when necessary
  • It has native programmability, allowing use without relying on third parties
• “System Equity” — ETH is like a stock in a decentralized computing platform: more users → higher demand for block space → higher fees + more ETH burned → increased scarcity
• “Digital Oil” — a commodity view that sits between the first two

These perspectives are not mutually exclusive; they are just different angles on the same thing.

My view relates to them but is slightly different: ETH is a cyberpunk currency, and cyberpunk is reflected in the current environment.

Cyberpunk vs. Crypto-Punk: Why this distinction matters now

In works like Neuromancer and Cyberpunk 2077, currency is less a moral concept and more a “routing tool”: credit chains, corporate accounts, street cash, social relationships—value flows through channels that are not fully monitored by any system. The real power lies with those who can complete transactions under pressure.

Money is everywhere, but the key question is: when big corporate systems turn against you, can you still transact? Authentication, access, executing trades, exiting markets—all boil down to one question: can your transactions be confirmed, settled, and recognized as valid?

This is the correct perspective for understanding Ethereum.

ETH is not narrowly “crypto-punk currency” (like ZCash, which emphasizes privacy). It is a cyberpunk currency: in a world that is both adversarial and interdependent, it is an anonymous credential.

There has been a false dichotomy in crypto: either you build liberating, resistance-oriented tech against institutions, or you build enterprise infrastructure—“betraying the ideals.” Reality is more complex and interesting:

• Large companies are building and using crypto rails—they are already doing so
• Crypto pathways bypass rigidity, exploitation, and censorship

Crypto-punks are a product of cryptography: privacy, anonymity, secure communication, resisting centralization through mathematical tools. They largely exclude “corporate actors” because companies are reluctant to trade in fully unregulated spaces.

Cyberpunk, on the other hand, is broader and more inclusive: hacking systems within institutional boundaries—blending technology, law, finance, identity, social engineering. Here, style is strategy; rules are written in code and contracts. Companies can operate here because compliance, enforcement, and accountability are possible, but “outlaws” can also exist—making cyberpunk a universe where all participants can freely interact, interconnect, and subvert.

Ethereum’s positioning is here: building protocols that allow conflicting institutions to operate together, while preserving true exit rights and property rights for anyone who can sign and pay. Using ETH as currency in this “city of the future”—that’s cyberpunk.

ETH as a Cyberpunk Currency

The value proposition of ETH as “currency” is often simplified into a “digital gold” narrative, trying to persuade Bitcoin holders and gold enthusiasts. But they already fully believe in BTC or gold and won’t switch to ETH.

BTC and gold themselves do not “carry” anything—they are memecoins, hedges against fiat inflation and central banking philosophies. Personally, I believe that in the new deflationary normal brought by AI and robotics, this hedge will become less relevant.

The vision of ETH as a cyberpunk currency is grander and more immediately appealing because ETH always transmits exercisable “system rights” within the Ethereum network. ETH is tightly bound to smart contract environments, enabling “trustless” commerce, which sustains its value even in a deflationary environment because:

• It is backed by real economic fundamentals
• In an increasingly extreme, tech-dominated society, both enterprises and individuals need an “economic autonomous zone”

ETH’s Fundamentals

Under proof-of-stake, ETH is not just a “representative” of value; it is a resource used to buy the ability to have your transactions executed, included in the blockchain, and participate in consensus:

• With Ethereum’s Hegota upgrade including FOCIL, paying ETH at current market rates guarantees your transaction will be included and executed in a block
• 32 ETH plus consumer-grade hardware can activate a validator to propose/attest blocks and (roughly) vote on protocol upgrades

These network powers within the protocol are ETH’s fundamentals. In practice, they are enforced by explicit state transition functions and penalty mechanisms.

This is why PoS better supports a cyberpunk currency than PoW:

• ETH grants native operational rights within the protocol: staking is a threshold, and staked assets can be penalized or slashed
• BTC relies on scarcity and durability supported by belief; mining requires specialized ASIC hardware, which has no intrinsic link to ownership, and transaction inclusion is basically a bribe market without protocol-level guarantees

A deeper difference: negative commitments. Because staked assets can be slashed and ASICs cannot, PoS chains can enforce bans protocol-wise, which PoW cannot:

• You cannot “equivocate” on chain splits without penalty
• You cannot be offline too long without penalty
• You cannot censor without penalty

A true social contract involves both “what should be done” and “what should not be done.” PoS can encode both via enforcement; PoW mainly encodes “what should be done” and hopes economic incentives work as intended. If not, look at the Bitcoin community’s debate over BIP-101, where they argue about punishing miners who include “spam.”

ETH can be a good currency because its monetary properties are not based on Ponzi economics or Lindy effects of a fixed supply, but on systemic “property rights”: the system rights to buy, execute, include, participate, and be recognized as first-class citizens within the core protocol—these are embedded in the ETH asset.

Ethereum’s Value Cycle: Utility → Security → Trustless Neutrality → More Utility

Ethereum operates in a cycle that is both economic and constitutional:

• Exercisable rights → Broad participation: low hardware barriers and permissionless staking enable security through widespread involvement
• Participation → Usage and demand: trustless settlement attracts developers, users, high-value use cases; demand for execution manifests as demand for ETH (fees, collateral, settlement)
• Usage → Fees: the system prices scarce block resources in ETH
• Fees → Validator rewards + burns: fees reward validators; high usage burns base fees to tighten supply
• Rewards + burns → ETH demand: ETH becomes an asset linked to yield and security, with scarcity increasing with usage
• ETH demand/price → Network security: PoS security is proportional to staked value and cost of attack
• Security → Trustless neutrality: the harder consensus is to break, the more credible the rule enforcement
• Trustless neutrality → Value and complex logic migration: important assets and serious contracts flow to the most resilient settlement layer, feeding back into usage

Any break in this chain weakens the entire argument. Ethereum’s design ensures these links remain tightly connected within a true circular economy.

Maintaining Trustless Neutrality in a Corporate-Dominated World

This is the turning point for cyberpunk: you should expect powerful institutions—exchanges, brokers, payment giants, rollup operators, custodians, even governments and quasi-government entities—to emerge. They will build rails, optimize their incentives, sometimes coordinate, sometimes coerce, sometimes coerce others.

The question isn’t “Will corporations use Ethereum?”—they already are. The real question is:

Is there any company—or consortium—that can tilt the system to put everyone else in a structurally subordinate position?

This is what “trustless neutrality” in a cyberpunk framework is actually doing. It’s not about moral purity but engineering constraints:

• A trustless foundational layer enables interoperability among adversarial participants
• Without trustless neutrality, the strongest players will ultimately dominate through policy, censorship, or subtle market structures

Ultimately, this points to the superpower of blockchain: greatly increasing societal scalability.

Ethereum becomes the only real “no special channels” economic zone, allowing counterparties to engage in large-scale commerce with low trust and limited legal recourse.

Inclusion and Censorship Resistance: The Foundation of Digital Property Rights

Property requires enforceable rights. If you “own” an asset but cannot transfer, exit, collateralize, or unwind it under pressure, you do not truly own it.

On blockchain, this enforcement boils down to:

Can you, at will, have an effective transaction included in history within a limited time frame, provided you pay the settlement price?

This is why censorship resistance is central to property rights. It’s also why Ethereum research continually aims to strengthen inclusion guarantees under adverse conditions—such as FOCIL (fork choice with enforced inclusion), explicitly reducing potential censorship freedom.

Speed alone cannot solve censorship. The key variables are:

• Distribution of block production power
• Protocol incentives and penalties
• Clear inclusion mechanisms when under threat

If enterprise stacks can blacklist you at the settlement layer, then that “currency” is fake. ETH’s valuation depends on Ethereum making such blacklisting structurally difficult.

Ethereum as a Programmable Legal Foundation: The Powerful Computing Public Domain

A useful mental model: view Ethereum as a programmable legal foundation—a reliable computing commons even when participants are adversarial.

This introduces a new primitive:

• Deploy code representing or executing protocols, markets, registries, rights
• Commit to executing according to protocol rules, not platform operator preferences

In other words: make commitments that are harder to breach than those of ordinary institutions, even if the breacher is wealthy, experienced, and willing to litigate forever.

You pay for this with system-native assets: ETH.

ETH is a cyberpunk currency because it is a blend of:

• Computational credit
• Performance collateral
• Neutral jurisdiction member token

The importance of the cyberpunk framework lies in the fact that the world we build is not an “infinite garden.” It is the boundary layer between old regimes and new institutions, where law and code mesh like misaligned gears. Ethereum’s advantage is its resistance to change, making it a shared foundational architecture.

L2 Scaling: Don’t Let the Plot Diverge

Rollups are essential. A rollup-centered roadmap is rational: keep L1 slow enough to maintain decentralization and verifiability, and extend execution via L2 that inherits L1 security.

But the cyberpunk risk is clear: L2 could become corporate enclaves:

• Centralized sequencers could censor or reorder transactions at the user level
• Tokenomics could shift value away from ETH
• Alternative data availability solutions could reduce economic coupling with L1

Therefore, future ETH-supported rollups should:

• Require L2 activity to pay settlement/data fees proportional to usage (so ETH burns/revenue stay coupled with adoption)
• Converge L2 neutrality toward L1 neutrality over time (decentralized sequencing, trusted exit, minimal governance attack surface)
• Keep ETH as a gravitational asset—fees, collateral, staking/deposits, inevitable exchange pathways

If L2 maintains economic coupling and inherits neutrality, they benefit ETH. Otherwise, they become fragmentation engines: lots of activity, value siphoned off, guarantees weakened.

In cyberpunk terms: corporate complexes can exist—but they must not quietly override the settlement constitution.

Tokenized Assets: Native Crypto Assets and Blockchain Theater

Tokenization only truly strengthens ETH’s narrative when it becomes crypto-native property, not a token IOU with admin keys and termination clauses.

The boundary is simple:

• Is the chain’s state transition function itself an authoritative transfer mechanism (or just a trigger that traditional institutions must follow)?
• Or is the token merely a UI pointer to an off-chain registry that can be ignored when inconvenient?

For Ethereum to serve as a settlement layer for important assets, it needs:

• On-chain events regarded as decisive (or at least presumptively authoritative)
• Execution minimized to objective cryptographic standards
• Human/legal interventions narrow, explicit, and exception-handling—not routine discretionary control

Ethereum’s inclusion guarantees again come into play. The validity of tokenized rights depends on your ability to exercise them under pressure. We need cyberpunk tokenization protocols on Ethereum.

Conclusion: ETH as a Cyberpunk Currency

Crypto-punks have given crypto its moral core: privacy, autonomy, resistance. But the real stage Ethereum is building for that is cyberpunk: corporations and new powers coexist on the same track, opposing yet interdependent, each creatively wielding technology and attempting to tilt the system.

In that world, currency is not just a store of value. It is:

• An execution credential
• A settlement resource
• A security tool
• A primitive for property enforcement

Therefore, “ETH as a cyberpunk currency” ultimately hinges on a constitutional argument: if Ethereum maintains trustless neutrality, inclusive trustworthiness, and remains economically coupled with its layer-2 solutions, then ETH’s value is not just based on belief.

Its value lies in being the only scarce credential in the entire tech stack that neither corporations nor new powers can control or manipulate.