Ethereum is becoming Wall Street’s blockchain of choice.
That’s according to Jan van Eck, the CEO of $132 billion asset fund manager, VanEck.
Ether is “very much what I call the Wall Street token,” he told Fox Business on August 28. When Wall Street CTOs ask themselves what blockchain to build on, he added, “it’s going to be Ethereum.”
Van Eck isn’t alone.
Wall Street strategist and BitMine chairman Tom Lee is also betting on the second largest cryptocurrency.
“Ethereum is the biggest macro trade of the decade,” he previously told DL News.
The comments come as optimism about Ethereum has surged. The second-biggest cryptocurrency trailed most of its rivals over the start of the year, which fuelled scepticism about the asset’s prospects.
While Bitcoin and XRP broke new records, Ethereum seemed unable to push past the all-time high set in 2021.
But a combination of Wall Street’s embrace of decentralised finance and the prospect of the Federal Reserve cutting interest rates has raised traders’ confidence and drove Ethereum to break a new record last week.
And analysts are bullish that the rally is not over.
Earlier this week, Geoffrey Kendrick, head of digital assets strategy at UK-based bank, Standard Chartered, said that Ether will top $7,500 “by years-end.”
BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes has forecasted a trip to $20,000 this cycle.
Stablecoin bonanza
Why are van Eck, Lee, and Hayes so bullish on Ethereum?
Simple: stablecoins.
Stablecoins have ballooned into a $280 billion market, with about half of that, or around $147 billion, living on Ethereum, according to data compiled by DefiLlama.
And now that US President Donald Trump has inked the Genius Act into law, banks are well poised to issue their own stablecoins, which means the pie is about to get much bigger.
This leaves little choice to financial institutions except for building on Ethereum rails, said van Eck.
“Because of stablecoins, every bank and financial services company has to have a way of taking in stablecoins,” van Eck said.
If a client wants to use stablecoins, “your bank will have to figure it out or you will find another institution to do that.”
Ethereum Virtual Machine
One of Ethereum’s main advantages is its technical standard dubbed the Ethereum Virtual Machine.
Basically, it’s the backbone powering most of the smart contract space.
This goes beyond stablecoins, and includes layer 2 networks like Arbitrum and Optimism, along with competing chains like Polygon that maintains EVM-compatibility.
Put together, they form an environment where code, capital, and developers can flow seamlessly.
For van Eck, the winner is going to be an entity who is building on Ethereum, or “someone using Ethereum’s methodology, which is called EVM.”
Staking and treasuries
But stablecoins and the Ethereum Virtual Machine aren’t the only allure for Wall Street to get involved in Ethereum.
Ethereum’s 3% staking yield puts it a step above Bitcoin, said Jeff Park, head of Alpha Strategies at Bitwise, which should draw institutional investors in, while the tokenisation sector has the potential to draw in $19 trillion.
And finally, Ethereum treasury companies are also devouring tokens at an unprecedented rate, with 70 firms holding nearly $20 billion worth of Ether on their balance sheets.
