Ethereum is Digital Oil: The Bull Case for ETH with Vivek & Danny Ryan from Etherealize

Transcript:

Vivek:
[0:00] It's not going to be long until people say ETH belongs in a portfolio with Bitcoin. But coming back to the tech stock part, it's just you're missing the forest for the trees. You're saying that cash flows are just one tiny, tiny portion. We should be looking at what digital oil means for the digital economy, what a store of value asset, what a reserve asset, what a fuel actually means. And that belongs in the same conversation, the same valuation zone as Bitcoin, if not higher.

Ryan:
[0:31] Bankless nation we have vivek and danny from etherealize they just released a report i really like the name here it's called the bull case for ethereum digital oil store of value and global reserve asset for the digital economy vivek danny welcome back to bankless thanks.

Danny:
[0:51] For having us all

Ryan:
[0:52] Right let's get into it there's a lot of bullishness in this report today what is the bull case for Ether, the asset. I'll throw this one to well, who wants it? Danny? Vivek? Who's more bullish between the two of you?

Danny:
[1:07] Vivek, please.

Vivek:
[1:08] I will kick it off. I think that we are in this renaissance period where everyone knows the value of Ethereum, the platform, Ethereum, the blockchain. We're seeing institutional adoption. We're seeing tokenization. We're seeing stablecoin adoption. We're seeing, even on the regulatory front, the Clarity Act and the Genius Act, which which is, if you had said this years ago, it'd be the most shocking thing ever. And here we are with everything the stars aligning for the Ethereum ecosystem. We want to highlight that in addition to Ethereum, there is this wonderful asset called ETH, which isn't called out enough, that has incredible store of value properties and has been misunderstood and is one of the best opportunities in the ecosystem to play upside in growth. So we're here to highlight that and we want to focus on that today.

Ryan:
[1:56] I like that this report is focused on Ether, the asset. And that's something that I felt like for a long time. We haven't done enough in the Ethereum community. We talk about the virtues of Ethereum, the network, all of the time. This report, in contrast, is all about Ether, the asset. Danny, I'm wondering if you could add to a Vivek's bullishness there by way of intro.

Danny:
[2:16] Yeah, so I mean, as you know, I've spent nearly the past decade working on the Ethereum platform. But in a crypto economic platform, in a blockchain, the platform, the network and the fundamental asset in relation to it are inextricably tied. And when we're working on a secure protocol, when we're working on a sustainable mechanism, when we're working on scaling things out, You know, we're also working on and always thinking about that asset that sits in the middle, that runs it, that secures it, that is, you know, the most pristine version of collateral within it. And by kind of laying the foundation of a... Truly decentralized, very resilient, and ultimately very economically sound platform. We've also been working on the asset itself. And so I think it's just worth highlighting that these things are nearly one and the same.

David:
[3:12] Yeah. You guys have your work cut out for you guys at Etherealize. This is the moment where I think a lot of the people in the industry from 2013, 2013, 2015 on, realized that like, oh, eventually the world's largest institutions are going to wake up to blockchain technology and figure out how to leverage it. And this is what we're watching in real time, right? Like Circle just went public. A lot of traditional financial institutions are looking to tokenize real world assets. You guys are the conduits between Wall Street and actually building and delivering products on Ethereum. And I feel like there's just a mountain of work that you guys have to do because there's so many Wall Street institutions out there that have products that they can sell that utilize Ethereum, utilize Ethereum block space. And then also now we have this focus on Ether, the asset. So in your list of priorities, why when there's so many Wall Street institutions out there, talk to me about why selling Ether, the asset or explaining the investment thesis behind Ether, the asset is sufficiently high in that list of priorities when you could also just you know, consult, advise on more stable coins or, you know, fixed income trading on chain or any of these other things that utilize Ethereum, the network. Why is Ether, the asset, so high on your priorities? So Becca, I'll start with you.

Vivek:
[4:25] I think that it's the most positive something in the entire crypto ecosystem for ETH, the asset, to perform well. And it makes, it creates a tailwind for the whole ecosystem. Of course, there's going to be tokenization on ETH. Of course, there's going to be stable coins on ETH. Of course, there's going to be layer twos that are institutional on ETH. And we've been focused very, very heavily on that for the last eight months. But we have come across questions like, what about ETH the asset? We don't understand ETH the asset. And these are part of institutional conversations. So all this does is improves our arsenal for a full blitz of adoption. Of course, we'll continue selling Ethereum, but it's two sides of the same coin, no pun intended, but we have to talk about ETH as well. And I think that in the past... People have been so focused on Ethereum and not on ETH and realized that by selling both together, it creates a flywheel. So we're happy to talk about ETH. It's a different way into different types of institutions. Not all institutions want to build L2s, so you can teach them about ETH. Not all institutions want to tokenize assets, but they have RIAs and they have people that have ETH ETFs. So having one universal narrative gives us an arsenal to go into everybody and fully blitz Ethereum and ETH.

Danny:
[5:35] And this is the most natural place to begin the financial and technical literacy that, you know, we're hoping to promote and beginning to promote in Wall Street and institutions beyond. You know, this helps them understand the network. This helps them understand the relationship between ETH and all the things that are happening on it. I mean, honestly, like if you read this report, it highlights all of the fantastic parts of Ethereum, of the community, of the network as it relates to this asset. So it's really kind of an entry point to that institutional education in Blitz. But there's so many other things, you know, and this is the tip of the iceberg. So, you know, expect plenty of institutional grade content coming from our way.

David:
[6:23] What's the conversation like when you open up this conversation with somebody from Wall Street or some institution? Are they approaching you guys about questions about Ether, the asset? Are you guys going to them? What's their base level of knowledge about Ether, the asset? Like what do they already understand to be true? What are the things that they're shocked about? Like what's just the average like base case for what the average institution or Wall Street individual understands about Ether? And like also what's their level of curiosity?

Vivek:
[6:52] About it. The base case is what's giving us the biggest opportunity, which is people want to tokenize assets. People want to employ stable phones. People want to use Ethereum, but they just don't know about the asset. It's not the first thing that comes to mind. And that's partially on us. We have such a network of such amazing utility that the asset almost comes second. And We're here to say that ETH is one of the greatest opportunities, I think the highest upside opportunities in the digital asset space. We'll never get a moment like now where there's so much curiosity and so much capital being invested across the crypto ecosystem. Every single bank is going to need a blockchain strategy. Every asset manager is going to need a blockchain strategy. Everyone wants to learn about this ecosystem. If we just end up with a single store of value across the whole crypto ecosystem in this renaissance, that'll be kind of a sad outcome. and there will be multiple stores of value. And we think ETH is right up there with Bitcoin. And institutions are yearning to learn more. They're just itching for a narrative. They're itching for some guidance. And this report, the other 40 pages saying, here's all the content in the world. Here are all the things that make ETH an amazing store of value, an amazing treasury asset, an amazing strategic reserve asset. And let's put a meme on it too. I mean, Bitcoin is digital gold. ETH is digital oil. We're going back to the old school meme saying that They're complementary assets, and both should be part of a portfolio, and both have enormous upside.

Danny:
[8:20] And institutions are large and complex and don't necessarily, you know, one side and one person doesn't necessarily talk to the other. So it really depends on who you're speaking with, right? There's people who understand ETH, but they don't know how to sell it, and they want to know how do they communicate this better to people. There's people that understand Ethereum deeply, but haven't thought much about ETH and want to understand how it relates to that and staking and this and that and the other. And then there's people that like, you know, know that they need to know about blockchain, but don't know where to start, you know, and so this becomes a good place to start. And it just, it's kind of spans the gamut. But this, I think is a great entry point for all of those.

Ryan:
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Ryan:
[10:45] So if you guys do this right, then not only are they tokenizing on the Ethereum network, They're also looking at ETH for their treasury as well. I mean, so in the intro to this, you have some words that I think grab institutional investors' attention. You say... ETH is the next generational asymmetric investment opportunity positioned to emerge as a core holding for institutional digital asset portfolios. Yet ETH today remains among the most significantly mispriced opportunities in global markets today. I assume you mean mispriced on the low side rather than the high side because you've got some numbers in here that are going to melt brains. We'll get into that in a bit. But Vivek, I want to get to this meme that you're going with and you're putting forward. One of the things I liked about this report is it's really, it's not just an etherealized report. It's kind of an ETH bull community type report. A lot of these metaphors, memes, even some of the vetting that you did, I know were for members of the ETH community. And so you're using some of these longstanding metaphors and analogies to really tell the story. But let's focus in on the one that you went with. the primary metaphor of ETH is digital oil. Why the digital oil metaphor? Well, maybe first, let me ask this. What's the market value of oil? I mean, I think people are pretty familiar with gold, something like $20 trillion, something like this.

Ryan:
[12:14] How about oil? What's the market cap of oil?

Vivek:
[12:19] $85 trillion. So there's some upside.

Ryan:
[12:23] So we like it because it's a bigger number? Is that why we like it?

Vivek:
[12:25] We like it for a lot of reasons. One is it's a bigger number. Oil is a strategic asset. It is a strategic reserve asset. It powers economies. It's stockpiled on a national level. It's used globally. ETH is that store of value. But for oil was the basis of the industrial revolution. We're now seeing a digital revolution. ETH is the digital oil for that digital revolution. And we think it's going to have the same amount of importance.

Ryan:
[12:52] Let's explain this. Pretend we are institutional investors. You've got this section in here comparing it to oil and you're saying ETH is like fuel for compute. Mechanically, Danny, how is ETH fuel for compute? So when you send a transaction on the Ethereum network.

Danny:
[13:08] There is a going market rate to utilize the limited amount of block space there is, and that is priced in ETH, right? So this is just one component of ETH's relationship to this complex network and economy, but it certainly fuels transactions. And we don't need to get hung up on the burn because that's, I think, one of many different mechanisms and relationships that ETH has to its value. But a portion of it is burn. So you do get a literal, you know, you get that kind of literal transition there. But at the same time, a lot of the, although the critical importance of ETH to this economy, you might compare to oil, you can't just pump more ETH, right? There's known supply dynamics. You know, the protocol itself, even if all ETH were staked, you know, you're capped at like 1.5% issuance per year. And even then, that's kind of an extreme scenario that we don't expect given the incentive structures here.

Ryan:
[14:09] So that's a good point, one that you guys make in the paper. So you say, unlike traditional commodities, like say something like oil, increased demand for ETH cannot trigger increased production, inevitably leading to an acute supply squeeze as adoption accelerates. Vivek, can you explain that a bit more? So, of course, if you have a commodity like oil or silver or even something like gold, the higher the price, the more people mine it, the more people extract it because there's value in doing that. And the cost to kind of extract it makes it worthwhile because of the price of the commodity itself. That is not the case for Ether, the asset. And why is that a distinction worth noting? Yeah.

Vivek:
[14:49] I think it's one of the most important distinctions. I think ETH is such a simple asset that we've overcomplicated because there's a whole network, there's a whole economy. But it's basically Bitcoin with an economy under it, which I think gives a tremendous offset and tremendous value. But coming back to Bitcoin has memed the supply cap very well, for better or worse. We can discuss the supply cap as a different discussion point, but let's assume that 21 million is the supply cap. ETH has an issuance cap. ETH is predictable, too. ETH is a very, very easy, predictable, modelable formula for supply and the max amount of potential issuance ever annually if fees are zero and if all ETH is staked is 1.51%. That's really, really important. in this world where the world is yearning for new types of assets to invest in. There's a lot of inflation going on globally. There's a lot of macroeconomic stuff. We need multiple stores of value. If we look at traditional stores of value, it's not just gold. You have real estate, you have treasury bonds, you have the stock market as a store of value. There's a lot of global store of values. There will be a lot of very, very high value store of value assets. ETH by having an issuance cap is arguably one of the best, if not, I think, the best store of value asset in the digital economy.

David:
[16:05] I want to know how well this metaphor lands with TradFi. This ETH is digital oil, because it's one of the metaphors that I think really fascinated me and Ryan back in the early days, back when no one really understood anything about blockchain technology in like 2019. And one of the big things is something that you said, Danny, I think where there's this whole entire economy surrounding this currency. And I think, you know, nation state currencies and bonds, the bond market is really valued by the strength of the economy that they hold. Like, why is the economy of the United States, why is the US dollar is what it is? Well, the United States economy is really, really strong. And the strength of fiat currencies is highly correlated to the strength of the economy that they correlate to. And then there's also this notion of like this petrodollar, where you want the currency of the United States dollars is tradable for this oil. And it directly correlates to like, oh, if you want to like consume some, if you want to do some application on Ethereum, if you want to do anything on Ethereum, send stable coins, tokenize real world assets, trade real world assets, you actually have to like consume some ether to power those applications. That's what the burn is. So there's a really strong correlation in this metaphor

David:
[17:16] with ether and oil to digital oil. Now I'm wondering, Vivek, is that kind of like, Okay, me and Ryan and you guys are just like huge nerds about Ethereum. We understand this. Does this land well with crowdfunding institutions? Does that make sense to them?

Vivek:
[17:31] It absolutely does. And it's funny because you said digital oil was the original OG meme when

David:
[17:37] We all came into the

Vivek:
[17:38] System. And then we overcomplicated it. We were like, wait, there's all these other cool things. TradFi and the world is at the point where we're at the birth of institutional Ethereum, where we're at the birth of institutional adoption. Going back to that digital oil meme, that's what catches on the most. We go ask, is oil somewhat polarizing? Yes. Is that fine? Yes. Does it elicit a reaction? Yes. But does it make it easier? Does it show value? Does it show that it's powerful? Does it show that it's essential fuel for this new global economy? Absolutely, yes. So it's landing more than anything else out there. And you guys were the author of the meme that originally got me into ETH, the triple point asset. And I love the triple point asset. But in wanting to simplify this a little more, I point to one of the points. And it's resonating really well. It's already one that gets picked up.

Danny:
[18:31] The digital oil component, you know, one, because some of the mechanisms that exist, some of the literal things that happen with ETH are like oil. But I think even more so, it captures the importance of it in

Vivek:
[18:45] Relation to the

Danny:
[18:46] Digital economy being built on top of Ethereum. And that's the entire structure of Ethereum and the entire network of applications and users is all kind of centered around and structured around this asset. And it's really that global importance. And then when you accent it with, again, the kind of known supply dynamics, you get a very, very interesting asset.

Ryan:
[19:08] I do think there's an analog to kind of add, we've been talking about ether as well, and you do also in this paper as a kind of a store of value as having a monetary premium as well. But this idea of ether being digital oil meshes with that too. Because as David was mentioning, folks who know their monetary history know that effectively, since Nixon took the US off the gold standard in the 1970s, we have been on the petrodollar.

Ryan:
[19:36] Petrodollar-backed US treasuries are the global reserve asset of the world. That's what central banks buy. That is the risk-free rate for the entire global economy. And it's not backed by gold right now. It's backed by the US dollar. And as David mentioned, that is further backed by the strength of the US economy and also the strength of the US military, aka security, right? Those are things that the Ethereum network does provide. It's got an economy. It's got an entire on-chain economy. You mentioned some stats in your paper. It secures almost 800 billion in total value right now. That's kind of the amount that it's securing. And so you've got an economy right now. And of course, you also have a military. These are the validators. This is the stake. $80 billion worth of military spend every single year kind of dwarfs Bitcoins, right? Bitcoin is something like $10 billion. Again, all these numbers are from your paper, which I thank you for. Anyway, that analogy I feel like can work even for the monetary history, sort of, I guess, Bitcoin types out there that want to think about it in monetary history terms.

Vivek:
[20:53] Agree completely.

Ryan:
[20:54] Let's talk a little bit more about the monetary design because I have to confess, I did not actually know, Vivek, the number 1.51% as the max issuance of Ether, the asset. And I guess maybe shame on me, right? Because I've been here for a little bit and we've been talking about... ETH monetary economics and issuance for a long time on Bankless, but I didn't actually have this number memorized. And that's interesting to me because I can quote, and everybody in crypto can probably quote, how many Bitcoin are there ever going to be? 21 million, right? Everyone knows that number. But as Ethereum community members,

Ryan:
[21:37] we don't know our own issuance policy to the degree that we probably should. So let's spend some time to actually go through it. I don't think this will be, maybe it'll be reviewed for some folks, but I think this could be good information for all of us. So you said the max theoretical inflation issuance for Ether was 1.51% per year. Okay. Can you explain how we get the max and like, what do we actually have? Because that's the max and we're lower than the max right now. And sometimes issuance of ETH is actually deflationary. So can you give us some numbers here and explain this in some more detail? Right.

Danny:
[22:20] So there's a number of mechanisms at play. The most critical to this conversation is the Ether issued to proof-of-stake validators. So Ethereum, the network, the protocol is secured by this thing called proof-of-stake akin to proof of work. And what happens there is users can take their ETH, they can lock it up. It is now at, it provides them essentially like the right and the responsibility to kind of secure the network. And also that ETH is at risk, which we don't need to get into at this point. But part of the reason you may do that is because of the ETH issued to validators. There's no cap on the amount of ETH that can be staked other than the literal amount of ETH that exists, which is something like 120 million today. And there's this nice curve where... For each additional ETH staked, there's a slightly more ETH issued to cover that, but it's not a linear relationship. It's actually like the inverse of the square root of the total ETH staked.

Vivek:
[23:32] This helps find a better equilibrium. So you're saying a

Danny:
[23:33] Decaying curve for people who need to imagine that. It doesn't matter that much, but it finds a better equilibrium than this fixed issuance. Also linear relationship also has some degenerate outcomes. So this degrading curve allows for finding a nice equilibrium.

Danny:
[23:50] Without setting it in stone to start. So anyway, you take essentially the total ETH that exists today and you plug into that formula. It has that square root function and a constant in relation to it. And you plug in 120 million and you get 1.151% per year. There are some nuances to this. So if the ETH supply grows and literally all ETH is staked, which is this like degenerate outcome that we don't expect to happen Unreasonable outcome, yeah, an extreme scenario. But it's just something that we, you know, it's good to know the extreme limits of the system. But, you know, if you had 125 million ETH in existence because of some issuance over time, that number actually goes down, the percentage that it can grow. Because again, that square root relationship, inverse square root relationship. So point being is a little bit more ETH is issued depending on the amount of ETH that is staked. But in the crazy scenario where all ETH is staked, there is a known maximum issuance, that's 1.15%. And in actuality, it's much lower because we have something like 30% ETH staked. And the mechanism naturally targets values much lower than the total amount. There are other things that accent this. So the first input here that is most critical is, okay, how much ETH is at stake? But they're given the burn mechanism.

Danny:
[25:19] There's a fixed supply of block space, increased demand on that block space burns a larger portion of the fees that come in from that. And so, you know, the supply and demand of the fee market does burn some amount of ETH. And so they're given any amount of usage of Ethereum, which we see very steady usage of, you get some amount of burn. So you augment that in the downward and can, in certain supply and demand scenarios, have an actual negative issuance. Again, so we have to start with a fixed cap. And any amount of like increased demand and usage augments it towards the lower. So you have a very known quantity here.

David:
[26:00] This is a conversation that we've hashed on Bankless a number of times. And I think it's worth kind of just placing this conversation into context about like, why do we talk about issuance? Why do we talk about supply cap? And, you know, in 2025, I think it's easy to forget, but a lot of the crypto industry was born out of the DNA of the 08 crisis, of the Occupy Wall Street movement. And this is where the 21 million supplied cap like chant came out of Bitcoin. And I think like we will say a very similar thing about the 1.51% maximum inflation rate of the ether, the native money of the Ethereum economy. Now, it's a little bit different because Bitcoin has a 21 million cap and Ethereum's cap is much more of an issuance cap. But it still comes from that same energy of having protocolized, codified, responsible monetary policy that's baked into the protocol that can't be changed by humans. Now, in Bitcoin's answer for this is just 21 million units. So easy to reason about. There will be no more. It's very much like gold. You can think about it like digital gold.

David:
[27:06] And Ethereum is a little bit different, but it still has that same ethos of we want to put fundamental constraints on who can tinker with the monetary policy of the Ethereum economy. And so the Ethereum strategy has landed at this issuance cap with some with some nuances that Danny highlighted to do the same thing of putting guardrails on financial fiscal irresponsibility and make sure that the Ethereum ecosystem, the Ethereum platform will exist for our children and our children's children, our children's children's children's because no one got irresponsible with the money spigot. But Danny, I want you to also tap into like, why is there a difference with Bitcoin, the hard cap of the number of units versus Ethereum and the hard cap of the inflation rate? Because that's a choice that was made by the Ethereum design. And I'm wondering if you could just like help the listener unpack, like why was that choice made and why is that important?

Danny:
[27:59] So if we could think about the mechanism here, we want a secure mechanism.

Ryan:
[28:03] Network. We want a thing that works.

Danny:
[28:05] We want a thing that has what we call crypto economic security. To have that, you have to have a sound mechanism at the core, but you also can't just debase the currency. You have to have some bound to this fundamental asset of the network. Otherwise, number goes down or value in relation to the units of these things can go down and you end up with an insecure network. This is born from looking at monetary policy debasement, but it's even accentuated in these mechanisms because the value of the asset and people wanting that asset is critical to the security of the system. So it's kind of the next layer of there. In terms of long-term security,

Danny:
[28:49] We need to have long-term incentives to stake or mine in relation to a blockchain and it turns out that satoshi was just wrong satoshi was brilliant satoshi set like had that that zero to one insight that we can create what have been called subsequently crypto economic decentralized networks but at the end of the day this this curve that approaches a number and has no flexibility in relation to that will have fundamental security problems because the miners or in a proof of state network that adopted the same principles or validators in the extreme are just not going to have the incentives to show up and do the work. And it will become, in crypto economic terms, cheaper and cheaper to attack these networks in the extreme. I know Justin Drake and maybe some others have predictions on dates of when that happens with Bitcoin. I haven't gotten deep into those numbers, but I do know that there is a flaw in that mechanism in the long tail, whether that's in four years or 10 years or 15 years, whatever. But we're designing for, as you said, generations.

Danny:
[29:58] And this mechanism that does have issuance, but in a bound way, finds a better balance between long-term security and long-term value of the underlying asset. Because at the end of the day, there is no value of Bitcoin if there's no security. So again, that's why I say kind of the outset, it's not a sustainable model.

Danny:
[30:24] And we've just, we've learned, you know, we've learned how to design these systems and make them better.

Ryan:
[30:29] The three words you guys have used in this report to describe ETH's monetary design is simple, transparent, and sustainable. I think, Danny, you were just talking about the sustainability of it, maybe versus some sort of fixed supply mechanism that sort of runs out of security budget, let's say, at some point in the future, I want to make sure we get kind of the simple part down. So, max theoretical inflation is... 100% of all ETH was staked, which is pretty much an impossible outcome. But if that happened, that's 1.51%. Now, practically, the current annualized issuance of ETH is nowhere near 1.51% because we have other mechanics at play, much fewer ETH staked than the maximum, I don't know, 30%, something in that range. And also we have the burn. So the actual current annualized issuance is around 0.68%. And just to benchmark that, maybe we should look at Bitcoins right now. This is after the most recent halving.

Ryan:
[31:32] Bitcoin's annualized issuance is 0.85%. And again, that is scheduled in about four years' time to be cut in half, maybe just less than four years' time, to be cut in half yet again. Whereas Ethereum's will stay, the issuance curve will stay the same. Now, the amount of issuance Ether has realized since the merge has been even lower than 0.68%. It's actually 0.09%, I believe, which seems outrageously low. But I suppose that's because during the earlier months post-merge, Ether was very squarely in deflationary territory.

Ryan:
[32:15] So when you're explaining this to investors, I mean, I guess you could show them the square root formula for max issuance if you really want to. But is it just simple enough to say, look, the max issuance this could ever theoretically achieve is like 1.51%, likely it's going to be far below that, probably hovering around 1%. And there are times of high demand and contention where it could spike down to 0% or in the negative territory. And like, this is algorithmically defined, so it's transparent. Central banks can't fiddle with it. Nobody can really mess with it. It's part of the protocol, just as inherent in Ethereum as the 21 million is in Bitcoin, and it's sustainable. Is that just the core message here, Vivek?

Ryan:
[33:04] If so, why has this been so hard to explain?

David:
[33:07] I just think we needed to come to

Vivek:
[33:09] First principles on it. I think people, the deeper they get into Ethereum, the more they become more and more enamored by the technology, by the blockchain, by the potential. We came back to first principles. I want to explain this as a Wall Street asset. And you've highlighted exactly what the pitch is. Let's separate out the economy completely. Let's just take the asset because that's basically Bitcoin, right? Bitcoin does not have an economy, so it just has an asset with a monetary policy. If we just take ETH as an asset, the max issuance ever, the issuance cap is 1.51%. Great. That's better in fiat. I think it's super interesting. It's programmatic. You can look at all the ETH software. It's open source, transparent. That's the max it'll ever be. Then you say, let's layer an economy on there. And actually, the more activity that happens, if you think block space is going to fill up, if you think there's going to be more stable coins issued, if you think there's going to be more tokenization, if you think there's going to be more L2s, then block space will get used. And that means ETH becomes deflationary. So I don't know, an asset with a max issuance of 1.51%, but that can actually go towards zero and even become deflationary if we think blockchain adoption is going to pick up, which I don't think there's anyone out there that thinks blockchain adoption is not going to pick up, then it's a pretty compelling asset. I don't know. I think it should be a core holding. And I think when people think about which digital assets to hold as treasury assets or as part of a portfolio, or when pitching to investors that want digital asset exposure,

Vivek:
[34:37] Bitcoin has crossed the Rubicon. For better or

Vivek:
[34:42] That's great. ETH is digital oil and ETH belongs as part of a portfolio too. And that weighting, I think, has been almost 100% Bitcoin, 0% ETH for now. I think it's going to start shifting. We're already starting to see ETH ETFs pick up. I think it's been like 15 straight days of inflows. We're already starting to see as a return to fundamentals happen for blockchain adoption, as regulation becomes friendly for stablecoin and for decentralized systems, that's going to flow through ETH. So I think it's going to be, the conversation is going to go from, let's just have Bitcoin in the store of value to let's have Bitcoin and ETH as a part of a portfolio. And that's going to cause a ridiculous repricing, I think.

Ryan:
[35:19] And if that's kind of the core story of ETH's monetary design, then what do you say about kind of the yield of staked ETH? Is that sort of a cherry on top?

Vivek:
[35:29] Cherry on top. All of it's a cherry on top. I mean, digital oil is a great analogy. I think it's memeable. I think it captures, like you said earlier, a lot of the geopolitical and strategic importance of it, but it's much more than just oil. It's a store of value with yield. So if you stake ETH, you get a yield. So not only do you have this amazing monetary asset with a capped issuance, but you also get a staking yield. And that staking yield has a call option embedded for the finance people or just upside. If there's more activity, your staking yield's higher. So you get indirect exposure to the growth of digital economy. That seems pretty cool. So if you want digital gold, you buy Bitcoin. If you want upside in blockchain adoption, you buy ETH. And that's what the narrative needs to go to. If people want exposure to stable coins, you can buy Circle. You can also buy ETH. If you want exposure to tokenization, you can buy ETH. The narrative is very, it's going to realign. And I think the opportunity is

Vivek:
[36:29] right now, but store value is worth a lot more than where ETH is right now is what I'll find.

David:
[36:35] I'm curious if institutions, Wall Street analysts, or just generally that archetype, if they come to you and they ask you the question, but why do I need to hold it? I think in this day and day, in this age, with like micro strategy and like even the Michael Saylor archetype, there's some sort of like answer as to like why you need to hold Bitcoin on

Vivek:
[36:55] Your balance sheet?

David:
[36:56] I mean, I won't give you, I won't give that answer. I think that's Michael Saylor's job, but there is a compelling answer out there as like why Bitcoin needs to be on somebody's balance sheet. So I don't know if you get these same questions. Like, why do I need to hold? That's an institution who's like, maybe I want to use Ethereum as a product, but like, do I need to hold it on my balance sheet? Like, what would you say to that question?

Vivek:
[37:17] You don't need to, but you should. I mean, for all the reasons that Michael Saylor are saying Bitcoin should be a treasury asset, I would argue, and you have the table up, that ETH should also be a treasury asset for all of those reasons, plus more, plus staking yield, plus the ability to generate revenue from your treasury asset. I would almost argue ETH's a better treasury asset. And now we have Joe Lubin leading the charge with Sharplink, with SBET, and he's going to show the use cases for ETH as a treasury asset. And let's line them up side by side and see. There's a lot of arguments for why ETH should be as important or even better of a treasury asset. So yeah, you don't need to hold ETH. That's the beautiful part of it. You can use ETH. You can use Ethereum. You can use stable coins. You can, we have, everything's abstracted away. You have account abstractions. So no one needs to touch it. They should, and that's part of the value of ETH that we want to highlight.

Danny:
[38:07] Yeah, another thing playing in here is like there is no, you know, set Bitcoin aside, in terms of a programmable blockchain, in terms of a blockchain that the global economy can be architected on top of, there's really no second place in my opinion and honestly in a lot of institutions' opinion. And honestly, if you look at some of the law happening in the U.S., like in the perspective of that, there's not like a second best in terms of an actually decentralized system, an actual system that reduces or nearly eliminates counterparty risk as we kind of re-architect the global economy and the digital landscape. And you see that in institutions when you speak to them, when they're talking about where would they think about tokenization, where would they actually build products? And the answer is, by and large, almost entirely just Ethereum because it doesn't have the counterpart. It doesn't have somebody that owns the system. It doesn't have central control points. When you go and look at draft legislation like the Clarity Act, you look at their decentralization or as they call it, their maturity test. There's only one blockchain that isn't having to show up or one programmable blockchain that doesn't have to show up and try to get carve outs or try to get specific language to make sure that they pass the test.

Danny:
[39:32] Ethereum passes the test all the time because it was born in a particular time. It had a particular token distribution. It has spent a decade working on decentralization and resilience at its core in terms of client diversity, in terms of the applications and diversity kind of across the globe happening on this thing. And so really from a, from the asset, you know, from a programmable blockchain standpoint, which it's the only interesting answer, you know, in terms of us thinking about like the digital future and in relation to the asset, the fundamental asset in relation to it, ETH is the only answer. And then if you start looking at Bitcoin, you start thinking about the security model and all sorts of other stuff. It's like, you know, do the digital gold thing. But I think if you actually understand what's going on there, it's like the value proposition begins to kind of degrade. And, you know, the actual like network effects and the things that will happen and kind of reinforce its place. It just doesn't exist.

David:
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David:
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Ryan:
[42:28] So let's talk about the elephant in the room, because I think as you're having these conversations with institutions, this will be in the back of their mind if they don't say so explicitly, and maybe it's in the back of some listeners' minds. So from September 2022 to today, the ETH Bitcoin ratio has declined about 70%. That's quite the drop. And so measured in Bitcoin, ETH is now trading near its 2018 lows. And you guys were here back in 2018. At least I know Danny was. I know David, you were. That was a dark time for Ethereum. Investors had written off Ethereum entirely. There were papers being written that Bitcoin is the only store of value. ETH is just gas money, that kind of thing. So explain this to institutional investors. Why has there been such a disconnect? If ether is digital oil, if it's such a good store of value, how come it appears over the last two and a half years or so that Bitcoin has really pulled ahead?

Ryan:
[43:32] I'll start.

Vivek:
[43:32] It's because ETH and Ethereum were not allowed to achieve their potential until literally right now. If we look at the Gensler administration, the only asset that really was cleared to thrive and shine as part of a digital assets portfolio was Bitcoin. There was a cloud of uncertainty around ETH. There's a cloud of uncertainty around all the other assets, but Bitcoin was the only asset where it was simple. It was a commodity. That's that. most of the activities on Ethereum were not allowed. DeFi was unclear, so it moved offshore. Stablecoins, unclear, mostly offshore. The use cases weren't allowed in the US and there was no regulatory framework. And then let's- Even

Danny:
[44:16] Until the last hour where ETHTFs even, anyone thought that they might go through. And that was the beginning of the transition. That was the previous administration getting worried that Silicon Valley and some of their special interest groups weren't going to vote with them. And they had to change the behind-the-scenes political tune overnight. You know, and that's only the beginning of us going, oh, our institution's going, oh, wait, this is a commodity? Oh, wait, this is something we can build on top of? And that's continued to change radically since that point last May.

Vivek:
[44:51] One important continuation from that is, obviously there are other assets for other blockchains that outperformed. And that's because a lot of we're going to see a renaissance of blockchains in the U.S., but a lot of blockchains are actually centralized companies. And they took bets that, OK, maybe we will have a wave of regulatory favor, of regulatory favorable conditions. And.

Ryan:
[45:18] They didn't care about the rule.

Vivek:
[45:19] They didn't care about decentralization. Ethereum has that deeply built into its core. And in the end, decentralization is going to win. In the end, a decentralized system that no one owns, that everyone can access, is the system where the financial system is going to live. And that's why temporarily you saw almost all assets outperform ETH in the short term. But right now, with the genius bill hopefully about to be passed with things like Clarity Act, that gives blue skies ahead for all the activity on Ethereum. So yeah, the institutional adoption is going to happen now. And the repricing is going to happen now. And until we had that clarity, it was leaking against other asset classes like Bitcoin.

Ryan:
[46:00] So you basically think that Bitcoin has had the regulatory clarity for let's call it the last five years. And juxtaposed with Ethereum and Ether, the asset, has basically had regulatory headwinds against it. And that has caused the institutions to just kind of like put it to the side and focus all of their efforts on Bitcoin. You're saying now that that is changing. You give an answer in the report that is maybe an extrapolation of what you just said, which is you say the answer is simple. Bitcoin's narrative is institutionally accepted and Ethereum's is not yet. Okay, so why is Bitcoin's narrative doing so well in institutions? And Ethereum's narrative still really hasn't, right? It's like, maybe this gets into the valuation of Ether, the asset. When I talk to institutions, it seems many of them are determined to treat Ether, the asset. They say Bitcoin is digital gold and Ethereum is a great piece of technology. Think of it as like a tech stock, something like Google in the early days, right? Think of it. And so look at the cash it's putting off, the discounted cash flow. Maybe that's a way to, you could treat that as like Web2 revenue.

Ryan:
[47:21] That's kind of the narrative that they're gravitating to. And I think there's a combination of maybe they don't want to give their investors a kind of second store of value asset. They already have Bitcoins. They don't want to muddy the waters and confuse things. Talk about valuing ETH as an asset and that conversation with institutions. How should they see it?

Vivek:
[47:44] Ethereum and ETH is not a tech company. ETH is a store of value. And we it took 15 years for institutions to understand Bitcoin right it took 15 years to get regulatory clarity so this did not happen overnight we needed a first easy to understand digitally native store value Bitcoin paved the way Bitcoin's going to be a treasury asset that's phenomenal it is a little bit harder to understand ETH not a lot harder as we're clearing up in this report it's actually pretty simple but it's understanding gap is quickly closing. Everyone's using Ethereum and it's not going to be long until people say ETH belongs in a portfolio with Bitcoin. But coming back to the tech stock part, it just, you're missing the forest for the trees. You're saying that cash flows are just one tiny, tiny portion. We should be looking at what digital oil means for the digital economy, What a store of value asset, what a reserve asset, what a fuel actually means. And that belongs in the same conversation, the same valuation zone as Bitcoin, if not higher.

Ryan:
[48:53] What I like about this report is it's more bullish, I think, straightforward than other kind of Ethereum reports that I've seen that are strapped in revenue. That when you guys are comparing to digital oil, you're looking at comps for other global reserve assets. You're saying ether is going to become and is on its way to becoming a global reserve asset. And let's look at the valuation of other global reserve assets today. So we had already mentioned oil, which is 85 trillion. Of course, people know gold around $22 trillion.

Ryan:
[49:30] You also have the global bond market is $140 trillion. You also have the whole global economy, $106 trillion. You also have global M2, which is like Monetary Measure 2, $93 trillion. And if you take an average of that, it's $89 trillion. And then you guys extrapolate that and you say, if Ethereum gets to $90 trillion, Ether, the asset gets to $90 trillion, and it's basically an average of all of those other global reserve assets, then the long-term potential for Ether, the asset, is $740,000 per ETH. I mean, that is a Michael Saylor bullish level prediction. And it's just straightforward. It's just based on comps of other global reserve assets. And you guys are making the case that Ether belongs alongside these others, and certainly alongside Bitcoin. Can you talk about that?

Vivek:
[50:29] I want to say two things about that. One is we can't underestimate the potential of blockchain technology. Ethereum is already a global network. Whether or not the US had accepted it, the rest of the world's already accepted it. It's already using it. This is as big as the internet with value flowing through it. I think the biggest risk is us selling ourselves short and saying that the potential is capped by some outdated valuation metric. This is a new asset class. This is a new technology.

Vivek:
[50:57] If Ethereum is a global network, ETH will be a global reserve asset. And here's the thought experiment which actually can get us to that $740,000 price target. I think everyone agrees that the world is going to be tokenized. I think everyone agrees that these tokenized assets are going to trade on large decentralized public blockchains. Ethereum is the marquee there. And the amount of tokenized assets is not just going to 10x, it's going to 100x, it's going to 1,000x. If every asset, if most assets on Ethereum have some tie to off-chain, have some tie to a legal system, are tokenized assets that are held by different jurisdictions, there is one neutral asset across this entire Ethereum economy, and that's ETH, the asset. So if we're talking about geopolitical, there is one asset that has minimal counterparty risk that can be trusted across jurisdictions, that's ETH. The price of trust, that's very, very, very high. The price of trust, a trustless asset that's collateral across the ecosystem that nation states will trade in and out of to go between tokenized assets, that's ETH. I think that could be $100 trillion.

Ryan:
[52:07] So I should also mention if 740,000 per ETH is kind of the long-term trajectory, you guys are more modest in the short to medium term. So you're calling the short-term potential 8K per ETH and medium-term 80,000 per ETH, which ordinarily I wouldn't call that number modest, but it is in the context of a $90 trillion market cap ETH or the asset. I feel like we've already talked about maybe the catalysts for an ETH repricing. Maybe we should turn it for a second toward Ethereum the network. So we've mostly been talking about Ether the asset, and that's incredibly refreshing, just like I love that bullish talk. Danny, I want to ask you a question about the trajectory of the Ethereum network right now in 2025. So it feels like the Ethereum scaling plan, I wouldn't say is pivoted, but has some new life in it, let's say. And now there's a a path to layer one vertical scaling as well as we have the existing path of layer two horizontal rollups. And you run those numbers and people have talked about 100,000 transactions per second without sacrificing any of the things that, as you've been saying, have made Ethereum what it is, which is the level of decentralization and security. Could you give us a refresh on your take on Ethereum's 2025 scaling path?

Danny:
[53:29] As I said earlier, we've spent the past decade with Ethereum focused on resilience, focused on decentralization, focused on a protocol that has impeccable uptime and that there's no central thing to attack, whether that's on the social or the technological layer.

Danny:
[53:49] And in doing so, especially on the L1 gas limit, the L1 scaling, we've been very modest. And that's been to, for a number of reasons. One, to ensure that we could have this multi-client paradigm to have the most resilient blockchain network in the world. To have this, to really seek like stability and maturity in the way these clients and the software is designed in terms of databasing and optimizations and being really good at handling the load. At the same time, we realized that you could scale these networks by scaling the amount of data made available. That's the whole L2 roll-up horizontal scaling, which we've seen quite a bit of. It turns out you can scale data far easier than you can scale L1 computation. So this becomes complementary to the L1 to have these zones that can inherit the security of Ethereum. But we've also come to this juncture where these clients are rock solid. We do have a decentralized and multi-client and very resilient ecosystem. And really two things. Now, these teams are very eager to push their clients to optimize the hell out of everything that they have to get more out of the L1 gas limit, to get more L1 scale. I think they're targeting 100 million gas at the end of the year, and we're something in the order of, you know, in the 30s right now, so 3x.

Danny:
[55:19] At the same time, during this window of focusing on decentralization, we've had a cryptographic renaissance. thoughts.

Danny:
[55:27] Things that we used to call moon math, things that we used to were like these fantastical academic constructions, you know, seven, eight years ago in the zero knowledge space, especially. We now have like robust production grade technology. There's been so much capital and innovation poured into the zkvm and specifically zkevm the ethereum virtual machine so zero knowledge ethereum virtual machine over the past many years that things that we thought were fantastical even three years ago are now in production in that roll up space and so we're at the we're at this juncture where the because these things have become increasingly mature because these things that we thought were like

Danny:
[56:12] Crazy moon math things we might see in a decade. Now that they're here, we can start talking about integrating them into L1 to get more scalability out of L1. So past that, you know, 100 million path, past that let's optimize the hell out of the clients that we have path, we can then start thinking about more advanced techniques like ZK, integrating ZK EVMs into the protocol itself. And so taking this, taking our time ensuring that we're focusing on decentralization, focusing on scale that really inherits and keeps the security of the system. We've laid a really incredible foundation where we're tackling now, not only kind of that horizontal scale through the roll-ups, but bringing it also back home and tackling scale at layer one.

Danny:
[56:59] So it's just a really exciting time, right? Like I think if you would have tried to do this three, four years ago, you would have ended up with maybe a more scalable Ethereum, but a way more centralized and way less secure Ethereum. But we're at this juncture where we can kind of have our cake and eat it too.

Ryan:
[57:18] So now that you're on the outside of the EF kind of looking in to these types of, you know, you got the new initiatives, right? Or the three-part initiatives of scale, the L1s, you know, scale L2 blobs, and then improve Ethereum UX. and I think that means integration, interoperability, make it not seem so fragmented. How optimistic are you on the progress that the Ethereum community can make in short order? Like, you know, six months to a year to 18 months on those three fronts. I'm very optimistic.

Danny:
[57:52] So in terms of the L2 scale, we have and have had very clear path on how to do that through data availability sampling. I think they usually call it peer DOS is the construction that they're going all in on. And that's just, let's just keep moving forward because they've been banging on that and getting in a really good spot. And I think we're going to be able to see iterative, very good scale from that without much issue. In terms of the L1 scale, that's certainly a kind of revitalized and newly pushed initiative, but it's leveraging the expertise that is across all of these clients in just a new way. It's mainly just them saying, we're going to focus. We've been focused on shipping proof of stake. We've focused on shipping blobs.

Danny:
[58:39] And then there was kind of this whole gamut of things that we wanted to get in, some security improvements, some UX improvements, just a bunch of stuff that needed to happen. But at the other side of this juncture, there seems to be a really shift in culture to say, okay, now that we've done all that, let's be very focused and do what we do well and optimize the hell out of these clients. And so I think it's a bit of a shift in tone, but I don't think it's like a radical shift in the expertise required or change in some of the fundamental structures there. And like I said earlier, like we spent a long time getting to the level where we have a dozen mature clients. And now this shift in phases, we have a dozen mature clients. We have the people that are best in the world at doing this stuff. Let's turn the gears up. As for the UX, you know, I've said for a while, there's two things when we have this horizontal scaling with roll-ups that feel fragmented. One is just the user experience of like, where are my assets? What am I doing? What am I interacting with right now? What am I bridging to? That kind of stuff. And then there's this other thing which is related, but it's more of the, it's this composability, especially synchronous composability. Can I, in this environment, interact specifically with this environment very cleanly, easily, and very fast?

Danny:
[59:58] My thesis, and I think a thesis of a number of people, is that 80% to 90% of the problem is really the former. It's the user experience of what is my wallet showing me? What do I have to think about as a user? Am I on ZK Sync or Optimism or whatever? Can I just be on Ethereum? Can I just have some default settings that say I want 90% of my assets in high security zone and 10% can be in this other place? Can I not think about the Uniswap pool I'm using and like a router algorithm underneath the wallet, underneath the hood can like just find the best trade in terms of where the assets are, where they need to be, where the liquidity is, et cetera. Like I don't want to have to think about that, right? And most of that is really a user experience. It's really a wallet, wallet, wallet standards and kind of the UX as we think about this complex system. And then I do think that there is a place for certain types of applications and certain types of users for the synchronous composability. And I do think that in terms of both some of the base roll-up constructions and some of the more and more sophisticated ZK-type constructions, that we're going to land in a good spot on that as well. I think that's probably a little bit farther out than just getting wallets, better wallet standards, and better kind of UX across the board.

Ryan:
[1:01:14] Vivek, you said earlier that you felt like Ethereum was kind of entering its renaissance. Are you seeing that in the community? Can you kind of explain what you mean by that? That seems to be part of the investment case here.

Vivek:
[1:01:26] Community as in Wall Street or the community as in Ethereum community or both?

Ryan:
[1:01:30] Yeah, just the Ethereum community, maybe Wall Street as well. I mean, like, what about right now in 2025? A lot of people think, well, because of the price action over the past two and a half years, people are saying things like, you know, Ethereum has lost it. It's lost its market share. It's lost its lead. You're making the opposite case here. You're saying, no, no, no. Ethereum is entering its renaissance. And maybe that's the energy you're seeing in the Ethereum community. Maybe that's some of the roadmap that Danny was talking about. What is it really for you that leads you to say those words?

Vivek:
[1:02:03] It's all of them. I mean, I wouldn't be so convicted if it weren't an all-in, all-signals flashing green at the exact same time. Let's take Wall Street. The first stop for tokenization is Ethereum. If anyone wants to build their own customized blockchain network, that's an Ethereum L2. We've already seen Deutsche Bank just launched their Ethereum L2. More will follow. So tokenization, stablecoin adoption, all that stuff is all systems go.

Ryan:
[1:02:32] Wall Street, like all human systems.

Vivek:
[1:02:36] Are animal spirits. So it's a herd mentality. It has been very popular for the last couple of years to say, okay, ETH is out of favor. ETH's out of favor. Let's not look at the asset. Contrarian investors step in at some point, and those people have been stepping in full force. ETH got to $1,400. People started saying, has it gone too far? Let's look at the discrepancy between activity on the network and the asset. And maybe one of these is wildly mispriced, and it's not the activity in the network because that's going to go up. So maybe it's the asset. It only takes a little bit for an asset to violate a reprice. It already bounced very, very sharply off its lows of $1,400, $1,500.

Vivek:
[1:03:14] And I think we've had two years of sell pressure, two years of people that are capitulating that doesn't go on forever. So I come with a very, very refreshed perspective. Part of it was I'm newer to the ecosystem than you guys. You guys have been for seven years, 10 years, I'm new. So I see this vibrant ecosystem where everything

Vivek:
[1:03:32] is thriving and I'm just like, this asset is amazing. And it has, this is exactly where Bitcoin was when Saylor started buying Bitcoin before we started MicroStrategy. And then Bitcoin went from 10k to 100k. All right, it's time for ETH to go from 2k to 20k to a lot higher than that. I don't know. I see the most amount of energy and adoption ever. Then let's get to the second thing we're finally we finally have regulatory a regulatory green light for innovation in the blockchain ecosystem and all roads all laws whatever passes flows through Ethereum as Danny said it is the decentralized system so that's great so that's going to unlock a lot of real use cases and thirdly the ETH community again I'm newer I like being newer so a lot of energy but everyone seems pretty pumped up so the last over the last couple years Yeah, it got a little despairing and looked like we were getting hit from all sides because we stuck to values of decentralization and stuck to the L2 roadmap and said that, okay,

Danny:
[1:04:28] Well, these are the designs

Vivek:
[1:04:29] To not compromise on. And that's part of, yet everyone that comes in the ecosystem, all these smart people, they never leave. So, I don't know, something keeps them there. Everyone seems really, really excited and really, really encouraged. And there's been, I mean, hopefully we're playing a part. We're seeing EF change for the better and becoming more and more aggressive. And we're seeing players like Joe Lubin and SBET come up to create more buy pressure and to talk about Eat the Asset. You had an amazing episode with him recently.

Ryan:
[1:05:00] I don't know.

Vivek:
[1:05:00] I don't see any reason to be bearish from here on out.

David:
[1:05:03] Vivek, I want to know about the Ethereum brand when it comes to Wall Street and maybe even Capitol Hill, because I know you've been across both. One of the big overhanging conversations is there are many TradFi institutions who are now interested in stable coins or real world assets.

Ryan:
[1:05:20] And they're shopping around.

David:
[1:05:21] They're shopping around for different blockchains about where should they deploy their, where should they tokenize their real world assets? Where should they enter the crypto market? And Ethereum seems to be the obvious place because it's just the largest place that has the most stable coins, the most real world assets. But in 2025, it's not the only place. So there are other blockchain brands, names with logos that are being considered by TradFi and any other financial institution. What does the Ethereum brand mean to them? Do they differentiate it? Or does the Ethereum logo kind of just like, intermingle with all the other logos and it doesn't really stick out. I don't know if you can interpret or speak for them, but what does the brand mean to them when they see Ethereum and see that diamond? Danny, what's up?

Danny:
[1:06:08] Let me take this. So I've been focused on building secure, decentralized system for a very long time. And sometimes when you look out, especially at the consumer landscape and especially at low value kind of quick little things, users don't necessarily care. They're like, I want my meme coin. I want my whatever. I'm getting in and out of this and that and the other. I'm going to hold this for three days. They don't parse the meaning of decentralization and the meaning of security. It's incredible to go and talk to institutions and banks and for them to say, yeah, we get Ethereum. We get decentralization. Without me saying it, they say, we get credible neutrality. And then they say, because our lens for the world is counterparty risk. And we don't want it. We want to eliminate counterparty risk. So we're thinking about a platform. Who are the counterparties? Is this thing actually decentralized? Does this thing have anyone that can turn it off or change things or whatever? Who becomes our counterparty by using a platform? And banks and institutions are like, we love it there because we love decentralization because we hate counterparties. So it's kind of cool. And I think that's one of the reasons there is because

Danny:
[1:07:23] Because they deal in very high value things, right? And I think that the consumer will also learn this through maybe the decisions of others, maybe through some education, but maybe through wallet standards. But consumers, when they're thinking about their life savings, when they're thinking about where their 401k is going to be and that kind of stuff, the decision is probably going to be very different than when they're thinking about like these low, low value kind of like quick in and out type things. And so I do think that institutions, that lens is very important and valuable. And the answer becomes Ethereum. And I do think that as we really are significantly thinking about onboarding significant portions of the global economy, that lens is going to become more and more important and valuable and digestible for consumers as well.

Ryan:
[1:08:06] So let's talk about where you're planning to publish this report. How are you going to push it out there? How are institutions going to look at this? Does this become incorporated into kind of your meetings with them about, you know, getting their tokens on Ethereum? How is this going to be distributed?

Vivek:
[1:08:25] All of the above. This is a community effort. It's very important. This isn't just an etherealized thing. We think that ETH has a place in a digital asset portfolio, a very large place in a digital asset portfolio. We think it's one of the best store of value assets out there. But we want to inspire the community. We want everyone to, I mean, we have a lot of contributors and co-authors and just, we want to push it out to all channels as a public good to the entire ecosystem, I'm saying, here's this asset, here's this amazing economy that's powered by the asset, and we'll take it to every single meeting. I mean, the ETF issuers, some of them don't have narratives, and so we'll give them some narratives. Here's a lot of different ways to look at ETH. RIAs and people that are going to allow for, most banks are going to have Bitcoin and ETH trading, so they've all announced that. So with that, let's give some sell-side research, let's give some content around ETH, the asset. So this will go everywhere, family offices, hedge funds, et cetera, and it'll go global too. So this is a piece for the community, by the community, saying that here's an amalgamation of everything that we've learned about ETH simplified into a lot of different bite-sized pieces, into memes, into the actual economics, into a comparison of the pros and cons of Bitcoin versus ETH, and let's take it and let's blitz it out and hopefully...

Vivek:
[1:09:46] The part I want to come back to is ETH doing well price-wise is the most positive something for the ecosystem. Every L2 token is beta on ETH. Every DeFi token is beta on ETH. Even Alt-L1 should be happy if ETH goes up because it means the whole ecosystem is going up. So I can't see a more positive outcome than more awareness around ETH. And if it transcends and becomes a store value asset, which I think it will, becomes a treasury asset, which is starting to become, the world becomes a better

Vivek:
[1:10:14] place. So we're here to help facilitate that.

Ryan:
[1:10:16] That's fantastic. And Vivek and Danny, thank you so much for leading the charge on really coordinating around kind of a message and a narrative. I know this is the entire Ethereum community has kind of waited for someone to take this narrative to the institutions. You guys are doing a fantastic job. And by the way, Vivek, you did a fantastic job in front of Congress. I think that was like last week. Like, well done. It was so cool to hear Ethereum, basically the narrative, the story in a congressional hearing. How surreal was that experience, by the way?

Vivek:
[1:10:45] It was the most surreal experience. It was an honor. It was a responsibility. And it's just very, very cool to see that Congress, government, they care about decentralization. They care about seeing the network that Ethereum has built and having some representation for it. And it is the most decentralized. It's not run by a company. So we got the tap to come represent it. But we're one of many that represent this giant, amazing ecosystem. And yeah, it was honestly an honor. And I'm glad that Ethereum is showing up now.

Ryan:
[1:11:17] All right. We heard the price prediction, 740K ETH at some point in this century. Danny, Vivek, thank you so much for joining us today.

Vivek:
[1:11:26] Thanks for having us.

Ryan:
[1:11:28] Bankless Nation, got to let you know, none of this has been financial advice, of course, though the report will be in the show notes. You can evaluate it for yourself. Crypto is risky. You could lose what you put in, but we are headed west. This is the frontier. It's not for everyone, but we're glad you're with us online.

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[1:11:40] Music