Dragonfly managing companion Haseeb Qureshi has sharpened his protection of Ethereum’s valuation, arguing that critics are utilizing the fallacious monetary framework and that ETH ought 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 talk over find out how to value layer 1 blockchains. On the core of Qureshi’s thesis is an easy however controversial declare: price income on Ethereum is successfully pure margin and ought to be handled as revenue, not as “income” within the conventional company sense.
“Blockchains don’t have income. They’ve revenue,” he mentioned. “When chains cost charges, that’s revenue. There’s no bills for a sequence. Chains don’t pay bills, proper? There’s no AWS internet hosting price for Ethereum.”
Qureshi Pushes Again On Claims Ethereum Is Overvalued
Santos had argued that Ethereum is buying and selling at “300 plus” instances gross sales, calling these price-to-sales (P/S) ranges “embarrassing” relative to conventional firms and suggesting valuations are “approach forward of their skis.” Qureshi didn’t contest the magnitude of the multiples however rejected P/S as the appropriate lens.
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“He was insisting within the debate that the appropriate approach to take a look at this stuff 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. In the event 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 mentioned.
He countered that for a blockchain, what fairness buyers would name “gross sales” is nearer to the GDP or GMV of the on-chain financial system, which isn’t instantly measured on the protocol stage. The one clear, observable line is price 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 fitting factor to know for a sequence is the revenue… The fitting 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 twenty 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 mentioned. “Within the yr I believe it was 2013… Amazon had a PE ratio… over 600 whereas in the present day the PE ratio of Ethereum in fact is one thing like 380.”
As a result of Ethereum’s P/S and P/E converge beneath his “charges = revenue” assumption, Qureshi’s argument is that buyers 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’re going to use a single headline ratio in any respect.
The broader context, he burdened, is that Ethereum and different L1s are nonetheless in an exponential build-out section, 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 greater over time. It’s gobbling up all the world of finance from the place it began,” he mentioned, 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 mentioned his conviction within the long-dated Ethereum thesis has elevated, not weakened, by means of the general public debate.
“If something, I’ve turn into extra assured for my part,” he mentioned, including that nothing materials had modified within the final months to justify a significant portfolio rethink. “What precisely has modified within the final 2 months between, you realize, 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 towards the “crypto is all an enormous 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—resembling a quantum break of cryptography or a structural collapse in on-chain stablecoin demand. Brief-term swings, in his view, are merely the pendulum of sentiment shifting 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