If Ethereum is a utility platform and the value of its coin rises, how can it continue to be used as a utility when its used as a store of value?
If the value of the coin rises (along with its transaction fees), than it makes no sense to be used as a utility coin. It will become a store of value, similarly to what bitcoin is destined to be.
But Bitcoin doesn't have smart contracts, no? And it was meant as for peer-to-peer transactions, but with no utility other than that I believe.
Bitcoin has no on-chain smart contracts due to security reasons, but it has off-chain solutions for that.
Ethereum on the otherhand is a utility platform and meant to build DAPPs, people use Solidity to build with Ethereum. So it has a use. So I suppose my point would be I find it kind of backwards when a utility coin is treated as a store of value, it defeats the purpose a tad and slows down innovation.
I don't think Ethereum can ever become a store of value in the sense Bitcoin is. Ethereum is a crypto-asset designed to fuel the ETH platform, and given the current situation with these ICOs, it would have to struggle in the future to maintain its value even where it is now.
I agree.