The thing about proverbs is that you shouldn't apply them literally. "selling shovels" here means: Instead of taking part in the hype something that is used by

The thing about proverbs is that you shouldn't apply them literally. "selling shovels" here means: Instead of taking part in the hype something that is used by hype-seekers to fascilitate their yearning is sold. It's often very likely that there are a lot of different kinds of businesses who profit this way. Sure the exchanges are profiting, the hash-box-producers profit, the VCs profit. In the original sense there were also different businesses profiting from the gold rush. Besides shovels you also had to buy food, other tools, shelter, a claim to a piece of land, etc. The special thing about Ethereum here is that they act like a participant in the gold rush to some degree. I actually thought they produce coins and try to find a meaningful use for them, just like bitcoin. But in fact they provide an infrastructure for coin producers. That's really interesting, imo. Since no matter how it goes, they will profit from it, and can easily exit any time when they feel the profits are diminishing too much.