Vechain CEO claims VTHO is too pricy, but not all agree

Vechain CEO Sunny Lu says the price of VTHO is too high at the recent Vechain summit, splitting the community in half.

As a result, ‘VTHO’ mentions have skyrocketed over the last 2 days, with over 260 new mentions in the past 48 hours alone:

VTHO is the Gas equivalent for Vechain’s blockchain. It is received through staking by every VET hodler and can be used to run apps on the network. Some, however, have also come to see and expect VTHO as a sort of ‘dividend’ for investing in, and supporting the Vechain ecosystem.

As a result, Sunny Lu’s comments have rippled through the Vechain community. One of the project subreddit’s most popular threads yesterday, titled “Vechain Overpriced?” has sparked a lengthy debate on the true purpose of VTHO, and whether this is the project being pragmatic, or shooting itself in the foot:

“The 'vtho overpriced' statement was the disaster of the evening. Cheap vtho could (not will) lead to cheap vet and vet at $0.007 in 3 or 4 years time is a personal disaster for me.“

“VTHO is the oil, VET is the well. When price/value of oil goes down, what happens to oil wells? They too decrease in value, sometimes to the point of being shut down because they can't cover overhead.“

Others, however, were quick to point out that (relatively) expensive VTHO could hinder mass adoption:

“The entire point of the system is not necessarily to keep VTHO stable or cheap - but to make transactions stable and cheap. Businesses complain VTHO is too expensive because transactions are too expensive, and that's what's being remedied.“

One of the biggest talking points was certainly the true aim/objective of both VTHO and Vechain’s main coin VET:

“VET is the investment not VTHOR. If VTHOR gets to expensive all those MOU's and partnerships will dry up real fast. They will all jump ship to a cheaper blockchain. Large business is ALWAYS trying to cut cost. Sunny knows this. VET is the investment you want not VTHOR. “

“Oh no the ceo of the ecosystem want more development by making this ecosystem cheaper to develop on. Oh no what a disappointment“

Some, however, see VTHO as much more than just a Gas-like coin with narrowly-defined utility:

“This is misguided unless VET has another way to capture the network utility outside of VTHO. VTHO is essentially the network equivalent of revenue for stakeholders in a business. Those flows are what give VET it’s value - that’s how the tokenomics were designed.

If prices are designed to remain low and manipulated for stability indefinitely without the input of stakeholders that means VET could potentially never really scale with network activity - no way to capture the value of network activity”

Even those developing atop the blockchain chimed in, sharing their concerns about the secondary token’s price action:

“As someone building on VeChain, I can attest that the biggest challenge I face is vtho cost. At the Summit I chatted with Luca about it. The consensus is that eventually over the long term, the price wont be as big of problem..”

As for Vechain’s main coin, VET has been dropping steadily since the summit, losing over 8% over the last 3 days before slightly bouncing back in the last few hours. Here's VET's 1-week price action:

As for the reason for the downtrend, some are convinced this single comment is to blame: