Etherealize co-founders Vivek Raman and Danny Ryan claimed Ethereum is winning the "institutional race" to modernize global financial systems.
Despite the rising popularity of alternative chains like Solana, Raman said that the biggest players in finance, including BlackRock, Fidelity and JPMorgan, have consistently chosen Ethereum for their on-chain forays in a recent appearance on CoinDesk’s Markets Outlook.
"Institutions aren’t trying to build meme coin casinos," Ryan said. "They are trying to upgrade markets from first principles."
He added that this preference stems from Ethereum’s 100% uptime, lack of counterparty risk and the "institutional precedent" that comes with being the longest-standing smart contract platform.
The founders highlighted a pivotal shift in the U.S. regulatory landscape. While the market structure bill — often referred to as the Clarity Act, from the House of Representatives' version of the bill — faces delays, the GENIUS Act has already served as a catalyst by legitimizing the use of public blockchains for stablecoins.
Raman said this law effectively "took the genie out of the bottle," signaling to banks and broker-dealers that using blockchain infrastructure is no longer a legal gamble. By de-risking the underlying rails, the act has allowed traditional finance to begin moving billions of dollars in tokenized money market funds and other assets onto Ethereum without waiting for a full market structure overhaul.
BlackRock’s BUIDL fund initially launched on Ethereum and expanded across networks like Solana, Polygon, Arbitrum and more. The fund holds more than $2 billion in assets. Meanwhile, JPMorgan Chase announced the launch of its first tokenized money-market fund on Ethereum, with an initial $100 million investment in December.
Looking forward, Ryan and Raman said they are bullish on ETH. Raman predicted a massive repricing of the asset from a few hundred billion dollars to a multi-trillion dollar market cap, potentially reaching $15,000 per token by the end of 2026. The token was trading at just over $3,200 on Friday afternoon.
This thesis relies on three pillars: a 5x expansion of the stablecoin market, a similar 5x growth in tokenized real-world assets and ETH's emergence as a "productive store of value" similar to bitcoin.
"Ethereum is civilizational infrastructure," Raman stated, suggesting that a $2 trillion market cap would still leave it smaller than many major tech companies despite its global utility.
Addressing concerns about Ethereum’s ability to handle this massive influx of capital, Ryan said the network is "ready for game time." Following major protocol upgrades and the expansion of Layer 2 scaling solutions, the network has seen gas limit increases and enhanced data availability.
Furthermore, the "final frontier" for institutional adoption — privacy — is being solved through zero-knowledge proofs. Etherealize is currently working with institutions to develop ZK-powered stacks that allow for private trades and confidential market interactions on the public ledger, ensuring that while the "plumbing" is public, sensitive business data remains protected, he said.