The Road Nobody Owns: Has Ethereum Already Passed the Point of No Return?

Before the Consensus Catches Up

We have been bearish on Ethereum and vocal about its structural flaws since at least last October, when we identified it as the easier short of this bear market. At $3,800, there was little reason to own it, a view we published on October 31, 2025, and reiterated in a November CoinDesk interview. The DeFi narrative, we argued, was built on false hope, and the mid-2025 rally was built on little more than Bitmine flows, flows that evaporated once Bitmine’s mNAV collapsed to 1.0x and the mechanism for extracting value from retail investors had run its course.

Over time, a price and its underlying value cannot remain detached indefinitely. Once the Bitmine flows exhausted themselves, Ethereum had nothing left to hide behind, and prices gravitated back toward the only floor the fundamentals could justify.

Three weeks ago, we issued another high-conviction bearish call on ETH. Prices have since fallen by 26% and are now trading below the level at which value has historically emerged. That changes the calculus. Or does it? Prices have now fallen nearly 60% from those October highs, and we have reached a level where the bearish thesis warrants a stress test.

This may be one of the rare moments where buying Ethereum makes sense (see also here). Or not? But it may equally mark the beginning of a terminal decline, the point where a cyclical low and a structural break become indistinguishable until it is too late. We revisit Ethereum’s value proposition with fresh eyes and attempt to answer the question that now matters most: generational buying opportunity or value trap?

Ethereum (LHS) vs. Our trend model (RHS)