Dragonfly managing associate Haseeb Qureshi has sharpened his protection of Ethereum’s valuation, arguing that critics are utilizing the unsuitable monetary framework and that ETH needs to be analyzed extra like an early-stage Amazon than a mature “worth” inventory.
Talking on the Milk Street Present on 9 December 2025, Qureshi revisited his now-viral valuation conflict with investor Santiago “Santi” Santos, hosted by ThreadGuy, which reignited the controversy over learn how to value layer 1 blockchains. On the core of Qureshi’s thesis is a straightforward however controversial declare: payment income on Ethereum is successfully pure margin and needs to be handled as revenue, not as “income” within the conventional company sense.
“Blockchains don’t have income. They’ve revenue,” he stated. “When chains cost charges, that’s revenue. There’s no bills for a series. Chains don’t pay bills, proper? There’s no AWS internet hosting value for Ethereum.”
Qureshi Pushes Again On Claims Ethereum Is Overvalued
Santos had argued that Ethereum is buying and selling at “300 plus” occasions gross sales, calling these price-to-sales (P/S) ranges “embarrassing” relative to conventional corporations and suggesting valuations are “means forward of their skis.” Qureshi didn’t contest the magnitude of the multiples however rejected P/S as the proper lens.
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“He was insisting within the debate that the proper means to have a look at these items is value of gross sales. So in the event you take a look at value gross sales for Ethereum, it’s one thing like 380. When you take a look at Amazon, I believe Amazon topped out at value of gross sales of 42. And this was throughout the bubble,” Qureshi stated.
He countered that for a blockchain, what fairness traders would name “gross sales” is nearer to the GDP or GMV of the on-chain economic system, which isn’t immediately measured on the protocol stage. The one clear, observable line is payment earnings, which he treats as internet earnings.
“The gross sales in some sense is just like the GDP of the blockchain which we’re not measuring,” he argued. “The proper factor to know for a series is the revenue… The proper factor to know is what’s the revenue of Ethereum relative to the revenue of Amazon.”
That opens the door to the Amazon analogy. Qureshi emphasised that Amazon delayed profitability for nearly 20 years to prioritize development, but public markets nonetheless assigned it extraordinarily excessive earnings multiples.
“Amazon actually made no revenue, no revenue till principally about 20 years in as a enterprise,” he stated. “Within the yr I believe it was 2013… Amazon had a PE ratio… over 600 whereas at this time the PE ratio of Ethereum in fact is one thing like 380.”
As a result of Ethereum’s P/S and P/E converge underneath his “charges = revenue” assumption, Qureshi’s argument is that traders ought to evaluate ETH’s 300–380x a number of to Amazon’s P/E historical past, to not its a lot decrease P/S, if they’ll use a single headline ratio in any respect.
The broader context, he pressured, is that Ethereum and different L1s are nonetheless in an exponential build-out part, extra akin to early web or e-commerce infrastructure than to late-cycle dividend payers.
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“This know-how has been getting larger and larger over time. It’s gobbling up all the world of finance from the place it began,” he stated, referencing his essay “In Protection of Exponentials.” “None of [these technologies] began printing a bunch of revenue instantly within the first 5 and even 10 years.”
Regardless of uneven value motion and underperformance of altcoins versus AI equities and gold, Qureshi stated his conviction within the long-dated Ethereum thesis has elevated, not weakened, via the general public debate.
“If something, I’ve turn into extra assured for my part,” he stated, including that nothing materials had modified within the final months to justify a serious portfolio rethink. “What precisely has modified within the final 2 months between, you understand, ETH going to love $4,800 and ETH being at $3,000? The reply is principally nothing.”
Shared some post-debate reflections on my L1 debate with @santiagoroel, my rebuttal in opposition to the “crypto is all a giant on line casino” doomers, and the place I believe we’re within the crypto macro cycle 👇 https://t.co/9uMJFuLVrX
— Haseeb ＞|＜ (@hosseeb) December 9, 2025
For Qureshi, a real repositioning would require a transparent invalidation of core assumptions—corresponding to a quantum break of cryptography or a structural collapse in on-chain stablecoin demand. Quick-term swings, in his view, are merely the pendulum of sentiment transferring round a still-fixed elementary anchor.
His message to skeptics is that if markets tolerated Amazon at 600x earnings whereas it scaled right into a dominant platform, dismissing Ethereum at roughly 300–380x on a “too excessive on P/S” argument alone is analytically inconsistent.
At press time, ETH traded at $3,325.
Featured picture created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com
