Etherealize's institutional case for ETH as productive money
21 Apr 2026 · 36:12
Vivek Raman, co-founder of Etherealize, and Michael McGuinness make an institutional case that ETH is the first form of productive money. They argue it improves on gold and Bitcoin as a store of value because staking yield compounds and the asset underpins stablecoins and tokenization, with Ethereum also positioned for a post-quantum future. LG Doucet presses them on what could break the thesis, including regulation, on the Milk Road Show.
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Ethereum is better money than gold for all the reasons Bitcoin is better money than gold, but then it's better than Bitcoin because it's more secure and then it has this productive yield component to it that it actually compounds, right? And like compounding is like the eighth miracle of the world, right? What's up everybody? It's LG Det here and welcome to the Milk Road Show, the daily crypto show where we firmly believe our grandchildren will ask us what it was like to sit and watch ETH at 2K and not unload the biggest clip possible into the asset. Today is April 21st, 2026. We were recording late on April 20th. Listen, Warren Buffett has spent decades warning investors away from gold and also from crypto. But today's guests have written a deep report arguing that Buffett's own logic, his exact words from his 2011 letter to
shareholders makes the case for owning Ethereum. The argument isn't that crypto is a good trade. It's that ETH is fundamentally better in money and that the trillion sitting in gold and Bitcoin are slowly waking up to that fact. If they're right, we're looking at 100x from current prices. Not kidding. A 100x. If they're wrong, well, that's what we're here to find out. We're going to I got to pepper them with questions. Typical Milk Road style. We're joined today by Vivc and Michael from Etherealize to take us through their report on Ethereum on the age of productive money. Today's episode is brought to you by Feros, the layer 1 built for reali, consensus Miami, where the next cycle starts, and Nexo, earn interest, borrow, and trade crypto.
Gentlemen, welcome back to Milk Road. >> Thanks so much for having us. Good to see you. >> Okay, so we have a lot to unpack here. It's always great in the bare market to talk Ethereum. I think we have a lot of Ethereum bulls at Milk Road and in our audience. So, I think they're going to be really excited to hear what you guys have to say. Vivc, um, as a co-founder of Etherealize, I want to understand from you before we kind of get to Michael. Um, what is kind of the TLDDR of this report? Because you guys have put out 22 fantastic pages making this really huge bulk case for for ETH. But I want to know like if I if I was just reading the 30 secondond Cole's notes, what are you guys saying here? So, let me zoom out first. And Ethereum is
primed to have its moment. I almost call it an Nvidia like moment where it becomes the universal backbone for the global financial system. Like all the stars have finally aligned. All the headwinds we've had for the last several years from a regulatory standpoint, from a technology not being ready standpoint, those are all tailwinds now. And so Etherealize, we have a dual mandate. And the first mandate is to say let's bring as many assets and institutions and players onto Ethereum as possible because it's the most positive sum network and platform where we can upgrade the financial system. But the second part of the mandate is saying it's important for Ethereum to be understood. We think it's almost like the new internet. And so we >> always will do institutional education, broader retail education sort of at
highlight what Ethereum is, what the L2s are, what tokenization is, but also importantly why ETH the asset is one of the most convex plays in the we believe that I believe in the entire ecosystem. So we think that since Ethereum is about to have its moment of shine, we think ETH the asset is one of the most interesting opportunities. And we thought that putting forth the thesis that ETH is the productive money that is ultimately going to be the supererset of of Bitcoin, the supererset of of gold is important for people to start to understand. So we're excited about this report. We think it's time we think it's time for Ether reach its final form and become the productive money for the entire global economy.
>> If you're not seeing this, you're trading blind right now. There are real moves happening behind the scenes that most people don't see until it's way too late. Inside Milkroad Pro, you can track exactly what our analysts are buying, selling, and what's on their watch list before it moves. Martin recently unloaded 40% of his cash off of one signal. And Melvin is up multiple calls by like 50%. And we're already up 30% this month on some alts. This is all happening every week. You can try it out for just a dollar for 7 days. The link is in the description. Michael, listen. I've been an ETH holder for a long time.
Okay. And I feel like there's other things I could have done with my money in the last 5 years. How is it I mean we're I going to hear from you a lot today. Uh but how is it to like dive into a report like this knowing that it's like listen there's a million reasons to be bullish, but that the modern day price action just still somehow does not reflect that. Is this like do you just get giddy writing this or is it like a little precarious or like I don't am I right? >> Yeah. I I mean well well the core problem is kind of like ETH wasn't really good money until the merge right it didn't have the monetary attributes that had today and um I think the core problem is that ETH is just it can do so many things right so it's the world
computer right it's digital oil um there's like all these different use cases for it um it's the leading play for tokenization and stable coins there's all these competing narratives and as a result people haven't really had a good idea of how they should value this asset and and most people are just valuing it as like a discount on a cash flow analysis on the projected fees. Um, which I think should really be viewed as like the floor like an intrinsic value floor for the asset. Um, but the core argument here is like since the merge um, and if you look at ETH's core monetary attributes going all the way back to Carl Manger who's like the founder of the Austrian School of Economics, right? You on all the qualities he outlines which is often which are often the qualities that Bitcoiners point to for why Bitcoin is
better than gold. ETH is actually um a superior monetary commodity than Bitcoin and gold and then it has this additional magical property that it compounds and it's a productive asset. So this was always Warren Buffett's the thing he hated about gold. People would ask why he doesn't own gold and he's like one it's not productive. There's no utility to it outside of like some use uh some industrial uses and jewelry. Um but two like if you hold 1 ounce of gold today a thousand years from now you'll still have 1 ounce of gold. Whereas if you own farmland or the example he gives is like 10x on mobiles, those assets will compound. They'll return capital and um they'll have a higher return on capital.
So that's the core thing here. So I I think the core problem is like Ethereum's narrative is uh too complicated and we're just trying to simplify it based on just monetary properties alone, if that makes sense. >> No, I I mean you're you're painting a great bullcase uh and one I think that we all believe in. Um, one thing that stands out to me in this report, and I feel like you guys led with this pretty on purpose, uh, is you lay out a path to 250K ETH, which would be more than a 100x from today, right? Yeah, it would be. Yeah, we're not even >> No, we're not.
>> No, we're not even at that would be like 10x or 20x. Um, so I'd love to I mean either I don't know who the right person is or you guys can kind of bounce off each other, but like how do you how do you frame that and and also like what kind of timeline is that on? >> Yeah. So I I wouldn't say it's like a price target. I I would say it's basically this is kind of how people value Bitcoin. They look at the total market cap of gold. They're like gold is a $30 trillion asset. Bitcoin's market cap is $1.5 trillion. Therefore, uh it's a 20x from here upside. And then you'll usually hear some type of argument that like the market could be much larger because like the digital form of some type of total addressable market is usually like 10x larger than the analog
form, right? Like and the example people point to is something like Uber versus taxis. So that's how people argue Bitcoin and they look at the monetary premium and and gold is the most straightforward one. You could look at monetary premiums in other asset classes, right? Like real estate has some embedded monetary premium in it. You could look at like the broader money supply. So like M2 is like $22 trillion. That's kind of like how Bitcoiners value Bitcoin and they have a very clear nar narrative that this is that Bitcoin is digital gold and here's uh what the total adjustable market is and here's the price per Bitcoin if it achieves that. And we basically just took that same exact framework and applied it to ETH. And instead of digital gold, it's productive money, which com competes against Bitcoin on its home turf on all
of its attributes it talks about, plus the productivity aspect, which Bitcoin and gold both don't compound, but ETH does. And that's like this one defining attribute that makes it 10x better money than Bitcoin or gold. >> Vivic, do what are your thoughts? Is are you you concur? Do you think that this is I guess kind of how do you Michael's given us the bull case and the kind of like the what distinguishes it but is there is it realistic to think that it will ever have parody with gold or that gold and bitcoin combined which is what you guys are painting here. >> I think it is because I think it's worth highlighting how big the blockchain opportunity is. So I mean >> everyone now universally thinks AI is going to be the biggest infrastructure.
Everyone's investing in it. The valuations are crazy. That took a long time. Like AI went sideways for a long time. and they're spent a lot of money sitting on the sidelines waiting for AI to repric and it did. Blockchains are coming at the exact same time. And so the the risk that I see is people under sell and undervalue the the upside opportunity that blockchains actually will will create. And if if the global financial system is running on public blockchains, um we think Ethereum is going to be by far the biggest winner. That's it's a lot of assets. Uh it's a lot of volume. It's a lot of transactions. It's just it's as ubiquitous as the internet. And so part of the reason why I think this is an asymmetric bet is people have just been valuing blockchains wrong um for the
last since inception with the exception of Bitcoin. Like Bitcoin >> ironically because it can't do anything um uh people had to value it on comps to to gold and said okay this is digital gold. ETH is like Bitcoin but again Bitcoin plus and that it has it's productive. It has a yield which financial people love but it also is a store of value and it's used as collateral. basically uses the money across the economy. It is an asymmetric bet to say that Ethereum will repric from being just valued on as a technology company like Mike said and transition to becoming a money and when that happens just it there is a potential 100x as that starts to happen and so people it's it's one of the best riskreward things to look at I think as
we think blockchains become universal and the timing again it might not be immediate to get to 100x that would be a little bit wishful But the the timing is the repricing could start pretty soon because people already people now know what Bitcoin is. People obviously know what gold is. The there is a need for a digital asset store value or multiple of them and ETH is emerging more and more as that second pristine store of value asset and we think it'll become the primary one. Black Rockck just launched their staked ETH ETF and so they're calling ETH a productive asset that's earning yield in a st ETF. Uh Harvard just rotated some of their Bitcoin holdings into ETH. So it's you're you're seeing the institutional allocations diversify. So it's it's starting now and this is the thesis for it to really
catch hold. >> What could derail this? Like what like you guys are giving us all the great reasons why uh ETH is valuable, but what like what would prevent this from happening? Like what would drive a lot of this either to another asset or just kind of break the thesis that you guys have in here? >> Sure. Uh I can I'll start my you can cover technical side. I'll cover I'll cover regulatory. I mean like a lot of the reason that we have been focused on Ethereum uh universally but also started Etherealized just a year and a half ago is because you need a regulatory tailwind for a blockchain ecosystem with smart contracts that's public and global. So basically Ethereum to reach its full potential. So Ethereum only had
its catalyst a year ago. I would argue when the Genius Act went into law because that allows for the the current biggest stable product market fit stable coins to to be issued on public blockchains. And so and so the regulatory environment is right now a big tailwind where everyone wants to tokenize assets. Stable coins are going vertical. Use case for stable coins are going vertical and this is a global movement and um and you're seeing laws being written. If that reverses, it could just delay this because this is predicated on ETH being a productive asset within the Ethereum ecosystem.
Again, the Ethereum ecosystem has to keep growing. I think I think it will keep growing a lot. But, uh, if if if there's regulatory things uh that that go the other way, then that could just delay the thesis. I don't think it derails it. I think blockchains are inevitable. It's as inevitable as AI. But, um, that's one big risk is is is sort of like a regulatory chill or a slowing of the regulatory adoption. I I would say the other risk is just changes to the protocol, right? So this has kind of always been the trade-off Bitcoin has made going back really this happens started in the block size war of 2017, right? Where Bitcoin decided they're no longer going to try to be peer-to-peer electronic cash. They're not going to try to scale throughput of uh the L1 and then they they're going to try to be
digital gold and they're not going to change the protocol at all and let it oify. And Ethereum took a different approach and they're like, "We will sacrifice that near-term stability that makes that you desire in a monetary asset for long-term viability." So, right, so Ethereum migrated to proof of stake. Um, that was a huge technical change. They currently have the postquantum road map, right? So, they're executing on that by 2029. They're moving to the ZK EVM. So, there's a lot of changes to the protocol that are being made, right? like they're supporting L2 so that you could kind of scale throughput to the millions of transactions per second that would be required to onboard uh the global financial system. So that's kind of been the biggest weakness so far. And the reason I think it hasn't been priced as
money yet because if you're going to store your if you're look money is essentially a savings technology, right? So if you if you want a technology that's going to make your savings today available tomorrow, you're going to want a protocol that doesn't change much. So I I think that's why this opportunity exists at all is because Ethereum has been changing so much. But my bet is that once you get through postquantum, once you get through the ZKVM, you scale the L1 to 10, thousands of transactions per second, you uh have L2 scaling to millions of transactions per second, then I think the protocol will start to oify and it'll start more closely to resemble Bitcoin where the monetary properties don't really change and it starts to be valued and then it becomes clear that it's more it's better money than Bitcoin. And I would go even
further that like I actually used to be a Bitcoiner. Um, and this is a yeah, so this is the this is the use case I care about the most. Like can we fix the money? All the core Bitcoiner arguments resonated with me a lot. And then I kind of came to the conclusion that like Bitcoin is not going to solve these problems. They're not going to build peer-to-peer electronic cash or what Satoshi originally outlined in the white paper. And I I thought that Ethereum was the best chance to do that. So that's why I migrated over to the Ethereum community. >> Man, I didn't know you were a converted believer or whatever you call that.
What's the term for There's got to be a term for that. There's got to be like an ETH term or like a bit I'm sure the Bitcoiners have a term for you like some kind of weird trader or something like that or uh >> uh you drank the wrong Kool-Aid. >> Well, I I think a lot of really smart people in the like Justin Drake I know used to be like a Bitcoiner and then he switched as well. I I think it's actually quite common. Um a lot of people who really like embracing new technology, believed in the peer-to-p peer electronic cash vision and kind of what Satoshi originally embedded in the genesis block of kind of like preventing bank bot bailouts and these trusted intermediaries. Uh, right, Ethereum's the opportunity to rearchitect the whole global financial system and the money um on top of it and I think it's our best
chance to do that. >> Trillions of dollars in real world assets are stuck offchain. real estate, commodities, private credit, all locked behind outdated systems that weren't built for a global 24/7 economy. The fix: bring those assets onchain. Problem is, most blockchains weren't designed for that either. Feros is. It's a layer 1 purpose-built for Real Fi, a real world financial infrastructure that lets assets be tokenized, verified, and traded at institutional scale. We're talking parallel execution for serious throughput, compliance baked in from day one, and infrastructure that actually connects onchain and off-chain systems.
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reserved for loyalty program members. Get started at milkroad.com/nexo. Michael, you said in your last uh kind of answer there that once we are post quantum, what does that actually look like for Ethereum? And we've talked about this a few times on Milk Grown in the last couple months and especially since um Google put out that research I think a couple weeks ago kind of giving a warning, you know, to the at least to the Bitcoin community uh kind of advising them or not so directly, but saying like listen, you got to get your you got to get your OGs and your devs and everybody back together because you have to prepare prepare for this because we might be able to crack it soon. And Ethereum clearly trying to get their ducks in a row as well. what does that actually mean to tackle this quantum
problem and what does postquantum look like? Like how do they know that they've done that? Maybe give it to us in a technical way that we can understand. >> Yeah. So, so um I'm not a quantum expert, right? I'm I'm mostly relying here on analysis from people like Justin Drake or Nick Carter, but like the basic issue, right, is that the security model of all blockchains today, they rely on elliptic curve cryp cryptography, right? And quantum computers um will eventually be able to break that. And like Justin Drake's estimate estimate is that like a 10% probability by 2032 you'll be able to break it, right? So 90% chance it doesn't happen by 2032, but like the Ethereum community wants to be prepared.
And right now the widely accepted way of becoming postquantum is moving from elliptic curve based signatures to hashbased signatures. Um and the plan is to kind of rip out to replace those signatures throughout Ethereum by 2029. And then um so this requires rewriting all um large aspects of the like the consensus layer and all the layers that go into Ethereum and the plan is to have it live by 2029 and then a quantum computer won't be able to kind of like attack the network. >> Got it. Okay. Okay. That's that's >> Anything you'd like to add? I I feel like >> Yeah, I feel like there's Yeah, >> the the part I want to sort of zoom out for is what Mike said. Ethereum's ability to change is probably what kept it from becoming as hard of money as
Bitcoin in the short term, but we're in a paradigm shift like like like and this is mostly because of AI, but like now every single aspect of technological development is being questioned. People are questioning what companies are, what software is, what kind of what what what everything is. So you need to have some ability to futureproof technologically. And so AI will probably advance quantum faster than we think. And so I feel like Bitcoin has spent a long time kicking the can down the road on a lot of issues. I mean one issue is always the security budget which um which which we can talk about this. But the second is is quantum and the needing to up and and the need to upgrade. And so if we think technology is going to accelerate in a
pretty big way, then we probably have to future proof from quantum and switch out of elliptic curve sooner rather than later. And so then you come down to who's the best position to switch? Well, you would argue that most most blockchains should have a developer set that can do that. But the only blockchain ecosystem that has the ven diagram of being decentralized and global and just has never had downtime and has always been globally coordinated in a very very distributed manner and also has the functionality that you need to future proof for is Ethereum. Everything else I kind of view as a company. So like you have companies or foundation sort of try to centralize upgrades but there's more central points of failure. There's fewer validators.
There's more. So you have this like beautiful the ven diagram saying Ethereum is the best futurep proof technology that can also become post postquantum. So what's the best money that comes out of it? Um the best postquantum money is very likely ETH the asset. So it's just another this is another catalyst to throw in for why this becomes productive money because it's not just uh usable and has and compounds and has a yield but it's also the most likely to futureproof more so than Bitcoin. I would say >> I think a few people definitely like and including you guys have kind of pointed to the constant upgrades and changes as also being something that's held it back, right? And it's I think there's a few different ways to look at that, but I do like kind of this chart that you guys put in here sort of the same a good way
to kind of look at it. um where you're comparing gold, Bitcoin and Ethereum across multiple different uh I guess way eval evaluators uh if you will like in terms of scarcity, fungeability, divisibility, portability, but one that stands out the one area that that Ethereum is weak on I guess or does not check the box is in that established history. Not really fair to compare to gold. Uh, but I guess we've done that a lot for crypto in the last like six months is, you know, precious metals have have uh really outperformed us. But I think that that's kind of what you guys are alluding to here is that listen, this is still a very new asset.
There's still a lot to figure out and that these changes are good before I guess it stabilizes, right? Is that is that what you guys envision here for ETH? Is it like do you think that this road to 250 and this road to kind of being all the things you guys are saying it can be in terms of its um how much it'll be adopted does it need to find a stable ground or are the constant changes a feature? Is this something that will forever be part of Ethereum as as something that needs to be upgraded regularly? Uh and even Vivc as you were saying as like we're we're redefining these days what a company is as well. Um is that what makes something like Ethereum really well positioned? Vivc, we'll start with you and we'll go to Michael. No, I think it absolutely needs
to have a path to oification. I just think you have to be able to change enough to be able to oify and also have enough robustness that uh that you can still innovate on top of it. And and I always come back to Ethereum like like Mike I was a wall we we both came from Wall Street. I first actually got into Bitcoin for a very short amount of time before getting into Ethereum because I was like wait Ethereum actually has the smart contract platform. It can actually be the settlement for the financial system and Bitcoin is an asset. So like with the pragmatic take, you need to be able to have an architecture that supports innovation, supports max modularity, supports all different types of institutional adoption, retail
adoption, different geographic adoption. That's what L2 is let you do. That's what the app layer lets you do. But ultimately the underlying foundational layer does have to oify at some point. So, so there's some set of just certainty and I think Ethereum has thread that needle very very well. If Ethereum had stayed proof of work, for example, as Mike said, it just wouldn't have been as good money that you would have run the same security budget issues. It just it had crazy inflation then. So, Ethereum needed to move to proof of stake and then Ethereum also needed to solve for both a rollup ccentric roadmap and then as ZK got better say, okay, we actually need to embed ZKVM into the L1. So, you can have a scalable L1 and scalable L2s. It needed to do what it's doing now. I need to increase gas limits. But again,
there's a road map and after that road map, especially after um Justin Drake's lean Ethereum postquantum vision, which will again happen in the global distributed way, it'll happen in a safe way. There's a lot of Ethereum clients, they all have to adopt it. There's a lot of redundancies and failovers like you can't shut Ethereum down just like you can't shut the internet down. So like it will happen in a very very methodical way. But after that then you're kind of at the endgame for the L1 roadmap and then all the next changes and innovations can happen at the app layer and the L2 layer. So, so yes, it does need to oify. I think there's a path there. I don't anyone wants to keep something that just has infinite change in it, but you need to change enough to be futurep proofed. I'm not sure Bitcoin
has or will. I think Ethereum will. >> Wow. Wow. Just admonishing Bitcoin saying they won't be able to change. I guess it's a lot harder to change Bitcoin, too. I feel like that's kind of what I've learned as well is that it's not it's not as simple. There's no Bitcoin foundation that kind of manages it. Not that I want to make this all about Bitcoin. Michael, did you have a take kind of on what I what Vivc was just saying about the guess adaptability of Ethereum and and that being like a product or a feature or a bug. >> Yeah, I I agree with VC. I I I think the protocol will like oify over time, right? But I also don't think like Satoshi's implementation of Bitcoin is like the perfect end end state either, right? Like he's a human, right, as well. And there's since been like almost
20 years of like blockchain research of like new consensus models like proof ofstake that are like more secure and they scale with the value of the network like ZK technology which allows you to increase the throughput of the network without sacrificing decentralization right like postquantum architectures as well right like all the all these things um I I think you should embrace those technologies and then over time as the protocol like kind of like your iPhone right like the iPhone changed a lot in the beginning and then over time it's like my iPhone today looks the same as it did a year ago Uh so I I think you'll start to see kind of the changes like asmmptote over time as you get closer to like theoretical perfection.
>> Yeah, that makes sense. Um, one thing I wanted to ask you guys about, um, is silver. And you guys make a very interesting analogy about silver in here. And I guess maybe you guys can kind of explain this to me because I guess you make a comparison to I think it was China's trying to trying to transition from silver to gold and how that didn't work. And I feel like you guys were making kind of like an interesting case for something, but it's it was unclear to me exactly what. Um, Michael, what what is what is this lesson of silver that we can apply to Ethereum today?
>> Yeah. So, so I I think that's just like a very clear example of why these monetary attributes that like Carl Manganger lists out are important, right? Because if you're deficient in any of them, um, the people who store their wealth in the superior monetary good will win over time, right? So, uh, for most of history, right, gold was more scarce, right? So that that's kind of like why out of all the base metals, gold was humans settled on gold as money was because it was more scarce than any other met metal. The so like the inflation rate of gold is about like 1 and a.5% a year and that's like held true. It hasn't changed much for most of for like the last 3,000 years. Um and then silver is like the next closest with like a inflation rate of like 10 to 20%. So as a result gold was kind of
like the money of kings, right? Like it had a very high valuetoe ratio which made it impractical for use in like daily commerce, right? um because like a shaving of gold would be worth too much. So that's where silver came in. Um because because gold was deficient in like this divisibility and portability property that created this avenue for silver u to be used for smaller transactions. So s silver accumulated its own monetary premium and then eventually um like countries moved to kind of more of like a fiat standard that's backed by gold, right? Which solved the divisibility problem with gold. So as a result there's like less of a need for silver. So like it's not scarce, it's not as divisible as gold anymore. And like you start to see some of the and then also uh the supply started increasing a lot. So you started
to see everybody just migrated. And then there's a lot of exogenous kind of factors. But that was like kind of like a big one that people who study monetary history like to point to is that as soon as it lost its dis uh divisibility advantage over gold, um you started to see it demonetized and then gold captured that monetary premium. So, it's kind of more of just like an example of like why these monetary attributes are important and how they lead to like competitive dynamics in the marketplace for a monetary good. >> Wall Street is here, the White House is here, all of crypto is here. We're talking about Consensus, the world's longest running and most influential digital assets conference happening in Miami May 5th through 7th. This is where 20,000 plus decision makers from 100 plus countries gathered to shape the future of finance. 72% are director
level or above representing over 4 trillion in crypto AUM. Three days, six stages, 500 plus speakers including Michael Sailor, Brad Garlinghouse, Anatoli Yako, and Eric Trump tackling the three forces driving trillions on chain crypto at scale institutional integration and agentic commerce. Deals get signed here, funds get raised here, the next cycle starts here. Register and save 20% with code milkroad at consensus.coindes.com. Right. Okay. And is that I guess I guess what I'm trying to understand here too and this is something you guys had had mentioned as well. I guess there there's so many components to Ethereum and the the compounding one is very interesting to me because I think a lot of people and I guess having a
historical example is is helpful but I don't know if it really applies to to modern day investors let's say who maybe are listening to this and they're understanding what you guys are saying. They're interested in this you know maybe buying more Ethereum. They're trying to decide which of the majors really that they they want to hold kind of going back into the upswing and um they want to build a good case. I think that the compounding part to me is very interesting because yes it does compound and it does you know you guys said you know you hold one ETH today and or 100 ETH today and in a year you'll have 103 roughly and but that that you know at a time like these days where we are in a very elevated economic climate let's say that that kind of return may pale uh
compared to what maybe some other sectors uh promise let's put it what and And obviously you guys make a lot of other cases where the actual asset itself would appreciate and even we've already kind of made that case, but what would you guys say to someone who's looking at it that way um you know maybe a traditional investor who hasn't really done too much crypto or is holding some majors and maybe wants to reallocate um but maybe can't get past that part where there's just going to be more short-term opportunities almost in this like insanely volatile market. VC, I want to hear from you on this one. >> Yeah, that that's the repricing of an asset. Digital assets are new.
Blockchains are fairly new, but um they're starting to become a part of every portfolio, right? I mean, like Charles just launched Bitcoin a neat spot for their entire set of customers. Like it it's growing institutional portfolio allocations. Um I think I just read yesterday that Japan said that a like some large percentage of institutional investors want some sort of crypto exposure. So it's here. If you are evaluating which crypto assets to have in a in a portfolio, assuming it's a part of every portfolio, there's there's really two pristine assets so far, it's it's Bitcoin and ETH. And so >> Bitcoin has no yield and Bitcoin they've used digital gold. ETH has the yield. So like it it's it's categorically better because you categorically have a yield.
So, I mean, if it were a five or six% yield, then then I don't I don't think that's as as uh important of a factor as it has a yield and so it's a productive asset that you can just store passively and it'll it'll grow over time. But I would I would argue that the embedded upside comes from this repricing of digital assets from tech companies or tech valuations to store value assets. And so that's what we're saying. we need when he reprices and it will at some point and then we know that there's so many assets even Nvidia was one that just went sideways for decades and then and then when it inflicted it really inflected like that moment's going to happen to ETH when it reprices from the wrong technology type framework to becoming productive money and people
start looking at like what the TAM of money is and so bring it all back home that's what we're playing for is it's when it reprices you need a strong Ethereum which is going to happen you need the growth of stable coins and L2s and tokenization it's going to happen. But you also need, like you said, we're in a weird economic world. I feel like we're always in a weird economic world though, but want alternative assets. And so ETH is a very very attractive alternative asset as a money. So relatively might not be I mean historically it's it's been very correlated, but at some point it'll break out and decouple. And so that's that's sort of the asymmetric upside you're playing for with with not that much downside relative to other things because again, ETH is blockchains are here to stay, tokenization is here to
stay. I mean, it's going to have a place alongside um Bitcoin forever. We just think it'll you have the upside comes from the asset repricing. It become a monetary asset, not just not just from the yield, but the yield is an thing to have, >> right? Yeah. It's nice that it has a yield on top of the eventual repricing of the asset basically. >> Yeah, I think that's exactly the point is right like this the TAM for money is like the biggest TAM ever, right? Um >> TAM for money. I love that. Um the productivity asset is kind of like really weird speaking to like institutional investors and like Wall Street people who want to own product who like productive assets. Um the core thing that won me from Bitcoin was I just think Ethereum is like more secure which is like the most important
property for money, right? So so I was a little worried about Bitcoin's uh declining block subsidy. So I think like6% of all revenue through miners comes from transaction fees and kind of like with the block size war like the bet was that what Satoshi originally envisioned was as the block subsidy declined those would be replaced by transaction fees and that's not really happening since the block size war they m since they decided they were going to be digital gold and not peer-to-peer electronic cash. So right now I think like we just did some back of the envelope calculations of like how like if you bought um the number of AS6 that Bitcoin miners have like how much would it cost you to like 51% attack the network it'd be something like around like $6 billion around that area which there's a host of like assumptions based in there but like
in that ballpark right like hyperscalers are spending that like every quarter right so um whereas Ethereum the proof ofstake model scales with Bitcoin's scales with the market cap which is really what you want for the security of a network right if you think about how countries allocate money to defense, right? It's a percentage of GDP usually because as something becomes more valuable, there's more of an incentive to attack it and then your security budget should increase in proportion with that. And proof of stake does that. So that's the so proof of stake is way more efficient of a mechanism mechanism as well, right? Rather than paying miners to solve really hard math problems, you're kind of paying transaction fees um and issuance out to holders of the token who are securing the network as well. So right like so with if ETH c right so
with proof of stake if it costs like 10% of the market cap to to attack the network. So if Ethereum's market cap right now is 300 billion 10% of that is 30 billion. If it goes to three trillion it'll be $300 billion to attack the network and so on. Whereas Bitcoin it doesn't really increase as the pricing Bitcoin has like a$20 trillion market cap and fees to min revenues to miners are still like 10 billion or$20 billion a year. that's very disproportionate to how value valuable that is if the whole world is using that as a global reserve asset. So that was kind of like the main thing is I didn't see how Bitcoin would solve this. I think they have two options like they either have to migrate to proof of stake or they have to add tail issuance right where u they don't
let the block subsidy decline which would remove the 21 million hard cap and then like which I think is critical to like the bitcoin narrative or you'd have to um by m when you migrate to proof of stake you remove you lose that oification aspect which has been bitcoin's core advantage so that's ultimately the core thing right like so the the point I really want to get across in this report is that Ethereum is better money than gold for all the reasons Bitcoin is better money than gold, but then it's better than Bitcoin because it's more secure and then it has this productive uh yield component to it that it actually compounds, right? And like compounding is like the eighth miracle of the world, right? So, and then you're going after this massive TAM that's tens of trillions of dollars,
right, in global the TAM for money. Um, so that's how I think about it. I actually think it's like the most asymmetric riskreward of our lifetimes, >> man. That's I got to clip that. That's go that's going in the clip bin right there, man. What a great way to say it. Great way to end it. Guys, where can uh where can people find this report if they want to read more? >> Sure. It's on productivemoney.org. There's a PDF there. There's um there's charts um that will kind of like show you how close we are to capturing the TAM for money. Um so yeah, check productivemoney.org. >> Man, the TAM for money is such a great term. That's such a great way to I love that. You're going to use that.
>> And then etherealize.com is uh where um you can find us. >> Beauty. Awesome. Thank you guys. has been very insightful and thank you for sharing the report. Thanks for giving us a little exclusive, too, cuz the report just came out today when you guys are listening to this. So, uh, go check it out. Um, and, uh, give both these guys a follow. We'll link everything in the description down below. Good to see you guys. Thanks for coming on. Want insights on what's moving crypto markets and how we're trading each event? Subscribe to our channel, join the Milkro Daily and Pro Newsletters, and start investing like the top 1%. This show is for educational purposes only. Nothing we say is financial advice.
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