Written by: Blockchain Knight
Investors have yet to fully recognize the potential of Ethereum (ETH) to replace Wall Street's outdated settlement infrastructure, as discussed by SharpLink CEO Joseph Chalom and EigenLayer founder Sreeram Kannan on the Milk Road podcast on September 15.
Chalom, who previously led BlackRock's digital asset program, outlined the fundamental frictions present in traditional finance.
The current system requires settlement cycles of several days, creates counterparty risk, and forces market participants to provide collateral for overnight financing, while intermediaries profit from these inefficiencies.
He stated, "The current ecosystem is quite difficult to access and full of friction, with intermediaries extracting rent from it."
The SharpLink CEO then contrasted this situation with Ethereum's atomic settlement capabilities, which can execute transactions in seconds without counterparty risk.
He believes that Ethereum represents an "emerging, fundamentally new type of public infrastructure, almost like the internet in the Web1 era, as an investment category." He positions the blockchain as a universal settlement layer for financial and economic systems.
Ethereum's programmable features enable portfolio rebalancing through smart contracts, distributing dividends in minutes rather than days, and achieving composable trading, allowing any asset to trade with any other asset at any time.
Chalom described these capabilities as the "secret weapon" for institutions seeking to surpass the efficiency of the current system.
Kannan extended this vision beyond finance, describing Ethereum as a "platform for verifiable trust," addressing counterparty risk through cryptographic verification rather than relying on institutional guarantees.
He noted that EigenLayer enables Ethereum to support other networks beyond the base protocol, explaining, "Verifiability is the cornerstone of society itself."
He mentioned examples of applications such as AI agent verification, prediction markets like Polymarket, and the need for trusted autonomous systems without human oversight.
Both executives emphasized that institutional investors are undergoing a transition from education to acceptance. Chalom pointed out that while Bitcoin requires an explanation of the concept of digital gold, Ethereum needs a deeper explanation of its infrastructure, which takes more time, but once understood, leads to stronger conviction.
The launch of the Ethereum ETF in July 2024 marks a turning point in acceptance, with financial management companies currently accumulating approximately $14-15 billion in ETH holdings.
Chalom predicts that as institutional participants recognize Ethereum's productive asset characteristics through staking and DeFi yields, the pace of accumulation will surpass MicroStrategy's accumulation of Bitcoin.
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