From the original Ethereum pre-sale blog post: https://blog.ethereum.org/2014/07/22/launching-the-ether-sal...

> Ether is a product, NOT a security or investment offering. Ether is simply a token useful for paying transaction fees or building or purchasing decentralized application services on the Ethereum platform; it does not give you voting rights over anything, and we make no guarantees of its future value.