For centuries, economists have agreed that for something to be considered 'money,' it has to fulfill three key functions: it must be a medium of exchange, a unit of account, and a store of value. It’s the triple-threat that turns a simple asset into the bedrock of an economy. Gold came close. The dollar achieved it. And now, something remarkable and entirely new is happening within the self-contained digital nation-state of Ethereum's DeFi ecosystem: ETH is becoming triple-point money. First, it's the undisputed medium of exchange. It is the network's native 'gas,' the energy required to make anything happen. Every swap, every loan, every action requires a small payment of ETH. It is the literal lifeblood that flows through the veins of the system. Second, it has become the default unit of account. The price of every other asset in this digital world, from NFTs to obscure tokens, is primarily denominated in ETH. We don't just ask 'How many dollars is it worth?'; we ask, 'How much ETH is it?' It is the system's shared language of value. And finally, and most powerfully, it has become the ecosystem's premier store of value and its most trusted form of collateral. Billions upon billions of dollars worth of ETH are locked away in protocols like Aave and Maker, not as a speculative bet, but as the foundational layer of trust upon which the entire DeFi credit market is built. It is the system's pristine reserve asset. And here is why this is so profound. These three functions create a powerful, self-reinforcing economic engine. The more people use DeFi (medium of exchange), the more valuable ETH becomes as the system's reserve asset (store of value), which in turn makes it a more stable and trusted benchmark for pricing everything else (unit of account). Each function strengthens the others. It's a positive feedback loop that drives immense, intrinsic demand for the asset, completely independent of market speculation. So, when I want to understand the fundamental health of Ethereum, I don't just look at the price. I look at the metrics that define this triple-point status. I go to DefiLlama and I watch the total value of ETH locked as collateral. I go to Dune and watch the amount of ETH being spent on gas fees, the true measure of economic activity. A rise in these numbers tells me that the internal economy of this digital nation is growing, and its native currency is becoming stronger and more essential. What we're witnessing is the organic evolution of a new kind of money, purpose-built for a new kind of economy. ETH's emergence as triple-point money within DeFi is perhaps the most significant economic experiment of our time. It's the engine that is powering the transition to an open, decentralized financial future, and it's only just getting started.