Joseph Chalom: The Ethereum Bull Thesis in 2026 (Why Now)

Transcript

If you look at crypto Twitter, people will tell you that Ethereum is dead. But then you look at Mr. Shalom here and look at him. He's got he's got a nice haircut in a nice suit. I I think ETH is anything but dead here. Joe, welcome back to the show, man. >> Uh, great to see you both. And by the way, two guys from Florida. There's nothing better. >> Love that, man. >> Got it right. That's absolutely right. >> Well, as I said, Joe, I mean, there's a lot to talk about. You guys have been doing some great work. We got to address the elephant in the room. If you look on crypto Twitter, if you look at people that have been ETH fanatics, you had the bankless guys breaking up and one guy selling all the ETH. You got people claiming that it's the easiest short

ever, dunking on everyone. I mean, Rob was just kind of giving this analogy to 2018, the the first bare market that we went through where was blockchain, not Bitcoin. Bitcoin had fallen and gotten crushed. Everyone was bullish on the promise of blockchain, but had, you know, had these really negative jaded takes about Bitcoin. Everyone right now is very, very bullish tokenization and stable coins, but still seems to have these negative jaded takes on ETH, the asset. Let's set the stage for the conversation. Joseph Shalom, is ETH dead?

>> Uh, no, it's not dead. I think when people capitulate is the time that smart money is made. And can I take a step back? So, Sharplink is the second largest corporate holder of ETH and I think we just need to tell that to your viewers. I have a stake in the outcome here. Um, other than Tom Lee, we are the second largest holder of ETH. And let me just give you my perspective and this is one human's perspective. I'm not looking for crypto Twitter to blow up and create hate here. The noise is missing the big picture. Let's step back from the short-term drama around the Ethereum Foundation and why don't we actually be objective and look at what Ethereum has

delivered and how it's positioned. Let me start by saying you guys go came from a a sports school. Look at the scoreboard. So in the prop properties that matter most for institutional adoption which is the future of Ethereum, Ethereum has the most trust, liquidity and security objectively speaking. It has the license to win. But sometimes in life, you have the license to win, but you're not winning. In all the categories where that license converts into real economic activity, Ethereum isn't just winning. It's winning by a mar a large margin. 50 plus% of stable coin value globally settled on Ethereum. tokenized assets.

You know, as soon as some of the next projects are tokenized that have been announced, it'll have 70% of all tokenized assets in the Ethereum ecosystem. And it frankly is the default for highv value DeFi transactions. So like there is no competing chain that's close on any of the dimensions. So I want to start with a reality check. Look at the scoreboard. And these did not happen by accident. And I'd love to have a really heated conversation and I'll give you my hot take on what's going well and what's not. But the scoreboard says Ethereum is winning and it has a license to win.

>> Yep. And we want to get into some of these hot takes as well, but we also want to we want to talk about the facts and the fact is that Ethereum is winning when it comes to stable coins. You mentioned over half market share when it comes to all the stable coins. It's winning when it comes to tokenization and RWAs. significant amounts of RWAS are on Ethereum. But let's get into some of the spicy stuff, Mr. Shalom. I mean, the asset is just not reacting to the lead that Ethereum has in some of these very significant categories despite the stable coin super cycle, despite the importance of tokenization broadly for finance as a whole. With all of this happening, it seems that the asset would be acrewing a lot of value. People have

been saying that something when it comes to the value of cruel mechanics is broken. I'm sure you can tell us and help us figure out and separate facts from fiction here. When it comes to ETH the asset, what are people not understanding? >> I think people don't understand that we're at a step function moment. And I'm not talking about Ethereum continuing to own 70% of all tokenization. I'm suggesting that right now there's only about 32 billion dollars of tokenized assets in the world. You're going to start seeing that go up by 5x, 10x, maybe even a 100x. Um, and when that happens, you want to be on a chain that's actually been building for that

moment. And I have a great analogy for you. People really, really gave Jeff Bezos a hard time as he was building his book selling business. It was losing money. it was losing money for years and they basically said look at the price don't look at the activity and he would say very clearly I'm not selling books I'm changing and building a platform that's going to change the future of commerce and you need to be patient with me because the TAM is going to be huge and it turns out from those days Amazon's price a 1000xed so I think we need to take a step back and say Ethereum actually has been doing the right things. The foundation is trying

to become even more decentralized. And by the way, that is not a bug. That is a feature. Look at what they've delivered uh over the years. And if I had a trade-off, and we'll get to the price of ETH in a minute. If I had a trade-off of having a chain that is amazing amazing at shortterm marketing and selling and conferences versus a chain that's built 10 years of security throughput uh privacy is coming and quantum proofing and you're taking a long view. I would take the chain that's decentralized and is building the platform over the future over a shortterm uh marketing engine. And I'm not trying to FUD anyone. I have a lot

of respect for the other chains out there, but I'd rather bet on the one that's building for the future because the value to Ether will acrue when you see these step function changes coming uh to the ecosystem. So like I'm not in a defensive position. The debate we should have is what is the role of the Ethereum Foundation versus the role of the private sector in the go to market and the marketing around the Ethereum institutional adoption. It is clear to me that the EF is not interested in being the goto market and marketing arm.

They're interested in building security, trust, throughput, and quantum proof, which I would take if I had a choice in a minute. But it means that people are going to need to step up and I'm being very very direct here. >> Yeah. Yeah. And I think you mean you bring up the most important point I think just to start off, which is absolutely great, which is, you know, we want to know your view then, right? People have alluded to the likes of Tom Lee, the the likes of of you and others kind of stepping up and being that um BD arm, that institutional sales arm with what Etherealize is doing as well. How do you view the role separation now of the EF and the Ethereum Foundation?

their role is versus what all of the treasury companies, all the private sector companies doing investments into Ethereum or into the ecosystem like Sharlink are. In your mind, what is that role distinction? Because I think right now the community wants to have a clear distinction and they want to stick with it and they want to know kind of what's happening on both sides. What do you view as that clear role distinction as it stands today? Well, I think it's very clear that Vitalik, who's a visionary, is thinking in decadel long periods and he's trying to futureproof Ethereum as the decentralized uncensorable platform for the future, not just for finance, but for governance and AI and

other things. So the role of the EF is to uh become the builder, the standard bearers, but also when necessary, they will take teams that are in the EF and decentralize them. And there's a there's a method to this, and I'm not even going to use the word madness. There's a method to this, which is they want this chain to be uh survivable in any situation. And by decentralizing validators, decentralizing node operators, decentralizing the core protocol builders, it's not tied to any one person or the size of the treasury.

So that's number one. Number two is I would say there are a lot of voices from Tom Lee to etherealize to myself to Joe Luben who feel like we've been the ones telling the institutional story to the institutions and by that I mean sharing facts. the most secure platform has never gone down for an instant. When other chains have beautiful websites sharing their downtime, Ethereum doesn't need that. But the most important thing that we do is when we talk to institutions and we do that regularly, we explain to them the benefits of having a platform that's truly decentralized where you don't have an individual player with governance rights who might have a lot of money in their

treasury but can actually change the rules of the game. If you're building the future rails for the largest banks, asset managers, insurance companies, clearing houses, they want certainty that no one is going to change the rules of the game. So, I think the role of the private sector ETH holders like ourselves is to tell that story. I also think you'll see over the coming weeks and months, you know, groups uh coming together in more formal ways to tell the story. And I do think it's clear that it's not the role of the Ethereum Foundation in its future incarnation to be the marketing arm of institutional adoption. That has to happen from the private sector and you'll see the largest stakeholder stake up step up. It

is our responsibility. Period. >> Yeah. And and we're all incentivized to do so. Joseph, I'd like to switch gears for educational purposes for just a moment. Given your background um you know serving as managing director at BlackRock, head of strategic ecosystem partnerships, you you played a key role in shaping some of these digital asset products uh like some of these you know Eyesshares Bitcoin trust as well as the Eyesshares Ethereum Trust. Recently we've seen quite a bit of activity in these ETFs uh both in Bitcoin and IBIT as well as the the ETH ETFs. These things have had record numbers of outflows. The market has absorbed those

outflows relatively well. But could you help us understand what these what this activity could mean? What these flows could mean? Is this capitulation you know these massive block trades essentially shaking these teams out. Selling is becoming less and less uh significant. What what do you make of uh these the recent activity given your deep understanding of these ETF products? >> Sure. Whether you're talking about the ETFs or the DATs, they're largely beta exposure to the underlying asset and their job is not to make the price of Bitcoin and ETH go up. The job is to create a great product. The ETFs are great products. the DATs are great

products to give people a better exposure vehicle than owning spot yourself. You don't want to own spot, Ethereum, uh, Ether, and then try to stake it if you're an institution. So, these vehicles are meant to allow people to express their opinions. And let's just be clear, in crypto, which is different than traditional finance, people in crypto buy when the price is going up. In every other market, people step in and buy when the price is going down. Um, but they're functioning exactly as they should. Neither Black Rockck or Fidelity or Franklin Templeton, it's not their job to create demand for Bitcoin and ETH. It's their job to give them a better wrapper. And these ETFs are functioning exactly as

they should. And the markets will tell the story. Is there interest or is there not in each one of these underlying? But I will tell you it feels like at this moment when people capitulate in retail markets and the sentiment is low, that is exactly the time to buy. That's when Warren Buffett buys. That's when money is made. I'm going to I'm old enough to know that when sentiment was bad in the 1970s, they bought Geico. When sentiment was bad around Bank of America and Goldman Sachs in 2008, Warren Buffett bought those. and you make money when others capitulate. Um, you just need to be mid to long-term oriented. So, um,

the final thing I'll say is, and I don't I don't work at Black Rockck. I don't speak at Black Rockck. Um, I worked there for 20 years. When FTX came about, most institutions stopped talking about Bitcoin and ETH. They weren't launching funds. At Black Rockck, we doubled down during that winter, and it turned out that was the right move. So, um, I think sentiment can be, uh, counteryclical. I'd be very bullish right now on the riskreward at these prices. >> Yeah. But I think I mean just to add to that like the sentiment side is there because of the underperformance of ETH the asset for the last couple years. How do we turn this thing around? Um this this community is one of the best in all of the industry. What are you seeing for

ETH the asset right now? Uh, as far as kind of turning around the underperformance and turning around the ship here, uh, it seems like we're probably coming to like a accumulation phase across the markets at large. Bitcoin's kind of just been chopping around the last, I don't know, five months, four months. Uh, not looking for like price predictions or like up or down here, but like holistically, macro-wise, underperformance for a couple years. People want to turn this thing around. Sentiment is bad because of that. I understand the counter cyclical nature of sentiment and kind of trading against your own psychology or the crowd, but what is going to turn this thing around?

>> I think it's going to be three things and I'm not going to give a price prediction other than what I said, which is the riskreward right now looks really good, but there is a complete divergence between the price of Ether and what you're seeing in the market. I think it's attributable to three things. Um, but you're right, it's a it's not a short-term thing. Um, it's been persisting for a bit. One is just you know the we are in a riskoff environment and for most of its history Bitcoin and ETH generally traded uncorrelated to stocks and bonds. What we've seen in the last year and a half is actually a very high correlation between Bitcoin and ETH to high-risk equities. And what's interesting is you would argue that the

markets are up, but in reality, a very small corner of the financial markets is doing remarkably well. It's the AI stocks and anyone uh providing um uh inputs to to that, the memory, the chip businesses. Until such time as there's a broader market sentiment that's risk, I think crypto assets are going to lag. And I'm being very direct. And the second thing is the geopolitical risk and the lack of liquidity in the market go hand in hand with inflated oil prices. Look at the price of WTI crude.

It is probably the greatest indicator right now on the price of Bitcoin and ETH. You look at the price of of WTI when it goes up. Bitcoin and ETH are inversely correlated. You need the war to end and the price of energy to come down. And the final thing, I'll just be very direct, is we expected at the beginning of the year three rate cuts, you know, 75 basis points. And Bitcoin and ETH are incredibly sensitive, incredibly sensitive to rates and liquidity in the market. And until such time that you get this temporary oil driven surge of inflation out of the way, it's very hard to imagine the Federal Reserve cutting rates. So I think you need more stability in the geopolitics. you need a broader market recovery was with a broader risk on and

you need rate sentiment uh to be more doubbish than what it is today. Until then, I think it's going these are going to be trading sideways. But again, this is probably one of the best entry points uh as we've seen. It's very hard to explain when tokenization, stable coins, DeFi, and Aentic are coming. And every day there's another announcement from an institution that two years ago would have moved the price of ETH. I think there is so much positivity before you even talk about the Clarity Act. We just need the decks to clear out a little bit for to let it run. But I'm I'm not in the business of making price predictions. Sorry about that.

>> And so I I Joseph, I think we all agree and we see the potential in the Ethereum ecosystem in leading these categories. tokenization, RWAS, stable coins. I think this inevitably leads to the rise of activity on the Ethereum blockchain, but there is this cohort of people out there where it's it's like Ethereum, not ETH, right? Just like it was blockchain, not Bitcoin in in 2018. Obviously, we know how that played out in 2018. Bitcoin ran to 100, you know, thousand plus. Again, not asking for price predictions. There are people that say that there's something wrong with the ETH value mechanism, right? I is the thesis here that you know we increase the uh the the uh transactions and the

activity on the Ethereum blockchain to such an extent that the burn is triggered and the ETH monetary mechanism kicks in. This ultimately you know is going to reduce the supply demand is going to increase. We know what happens um or is the ETH is money thesis is that still the driving thesis here. What is the thesis for ETH the asset and why is you know Ethereum not ETH? Why is that the incorrect take here? >> Yeah, I think the it's the former which is let's just be clear when you see what the Ethereum Foundation is building and I'm talking about Ethereum mainet right now. I'm not talking about the L2s who who are built on top of Ethereum. When

you they're basically reducing gas fees significantly. They're doing 3x increases in capabilities and throughput because mainet needs to be built to support the volume that's coming from tokenization stable coins and agentic micro payments. I think if it grows incrementally, you won't trigger the burn in a way that's going to drive the price of ether up. But we genuinely believe we're going to see step function increases from stable coins, tokenization, and agentic that will create that demand that will trigger the burn. And when that happens and you start seeing 10x, 20x, 50x or more transactions on Ethereum and the L2s,

you're going to end up needing Ether as that trustwware to secure the transactions. That is the thesis. But I gave the Jeff Bezos uh I gave the Jeff Bezos analogy which was he was criticized for selling books at a low cost uh driving throughput and volume uh I would make an argument taking losses for a long period because he was trying to build for the future of e-commerce and then you saw what happened. I I believe the Ether Ethereum uh thesis is very it's very similar. So um I I don't think it's the Bitcoin store of value. I think the network is gonna end up having transaction volumes that are going to be so high that you'll trigger the burn and that will lead to higher ether prices.

That would be the conviction I have. You know I Joseph I I agree with you because I think we are able to reach these levels of scale but I have this internal Jevans paradox I and and it's that you know the EF and the developers and all of this work uh with really really intelligent developers is going into scaling the chain which is driving gas fees lower on a per transaction basis. On the other side, you have greater activity and but it feels like these things are at, you know, at odds with one another. If we're really going to scale the chain, we're going to make transactions very very cheap, then, you know, we we wouldn't create as much uh congestion on the network and therefore

we wouldn't require as much you know fees in order to charge on a per transaction basis. Again, this might just be, you know, compensated by the enormous amount of scale of this activity. I is that is that the case? We're just going to outpay as intelligent these developers are as much as they can reduce the fee overhead and scale the chain. That is just nominal when it's relative to the amount of demand that we're we're looking to create here with this activity. That is the answer and that is the belief and they're trying to be precient which is they and when you see what's coming out uh in Glamsterdam it's going to be able to handle volumes like we haven't seen but also be able to handle periods of low volume and handle periods of peak

volume um because the system can't uh fail over and uh I think you're going to end up seeing that and I think it's some combination of stable coin growth um but I think tokenization people are wildly underestimating And when that happens and you start seeing 247 trading on NASDAQ and NIS and you see the DTCC leveraging a series of change to dematerialize collateral and allow wallet movements, you know, you would have seen the Brian Armstrong tweet a few weeks back saying there were 160 million agent-to agent payments in Q1. Very small dollar amounts, but we're this is the tip of the iceberg. And when that demand comes, you're going to need

uh Ether, the token, and there's going to be a lot more burn, and that should be really positive for Ether. But they're not taking short-term decisions. And I think it's actually very smart. How this is all being communicated, I don't think, is great. And I think, as I said earlier, private sector stakeholders uh need to have a much bigger voice in terms of organizing uh that thesis and how we tell the story better. It it's a marketing problem. It's not a protocol problem. And I've got one one quick followup on this note because it does seem like tokenization. Ethereum is the leader stable coins as well. But on tokenization, you know, there's kind of the spectrum of ass of of assets that are ready to be tokenized. Uh Andy and I have talked about this before. It's part of our NEO

finance thesis. We started with stable coins, the lowest on the risk curve, and now we're getting into, you know, bonds, private credit, tokenized equities. We're kind of going down the risk curve. Uh when it comes to the tokenization thesis, all of these things become tokenized and become onchain and they a a large swath of those assets end up on Ethereum. The the the question I have is how how much velocity do we need really like the the strength of of Ethereum seems to be the security of it. It never goes down. It's very secure. It has very robust and resilient infrastructure. But when it comes to the the amount of throughput or high frequency activity that we need in order to really really

ramp up the number of transactions per second, it feels like a lot of that activity has flowed to the likes of Hyperlid and Salana. Whereas, you know, they might be prioritizing speed, you know, Ethereum is prioritizing security. how much of the tokenized assets that are coming on chain are coming to Ethereum for a lot of transactions per second and then therefore you know playing into this you know very high activity thesis uh that ultimately you know we talked about is is flowing into ETH the asset >> yeah I'll I'll answer that in two ways um and again I want to be the most positive person in this ecosystem I believe there are going to be a lot of survivors Lana is doing a remarkable job focused on like a very narrow O use case

of highfrequency trading. Um I think if you look at where the real money is, look at the largest asset managers in the world, the Vanguards, the JP Morgans, the Black Rockcks, the Franklin Templetons, the amount of assets that they're going to be tokenizing and the transactions they're doing is not high frequency, but when when they're on tokenized rails, just take a step back. We've been talking about tokenization since 2017. Um there are $32 billion of assets tokenized roughly. Black Rockck announced that they're not going to tokenize a new fund. They're going to tokenize a existing fund with 7 to8 billion in AUM. Wait till you start

seeing the next one which could be a a a large asset manager tokenizing an S&P 500 fund which could have $500 billion in that fund. So you're talking about step function increases coming. I don't think it's going to be the high velocity, high frequency, you know, blackbox algorithmic trading. I just think you're going to see most transactions over time in ETFs, in individual stocks, in the most liquid corporate bonds are going to be tra traded on chain. And I don't necessarily think it's because it's 247 versus, you know, nine hours a day. It's just going to be a lot more activity on chain that exists today. And I think what we miss

is one of the biggest chicken and egg problems in tokenization is you have these products but they're KYCed and it requires liquidity. And until you start seeing bigger and bigger funds and bigger and bigger participants coming in, you're not going to have the liquidity profile to allow that high velocity. But at some point you're going to get to a tipping point and liquidity begets liquidity. I think it's going to be coming from the buy and hold type investors who happen to manage hundreds of trillions of dollars. It's not going to be the high frequency traders who are really focused on that one Salana speed use case. These people need finality over speed and they need economic

security over speed and they even need um economic security over price. So um I don't think it's going to be the high frequency. It's just going to be there's the volume of tokenized assets and the time periods they're going to be able to trade in is going to be 10x 100x,000x what you see today in terms of tokenized assets trading. We're at the tip of the tip of the iceberg. We're in the top of the first inning, not the middle innings here. >> Yeah. I mean, we've been just trying to shatter this reality in people's minds that we've built this onchain ecosystem for the $150 billion that's onchain and the three trillion total assets in the cryptoverse and that we're really

looking at the hundreds of trillions of other assets being tokenized being used on chain. Those will be on Ethereum. One of the things, Joe, that I think is exciting for people is this idea that eventually the major crypto assets will have this kind of passive bid and it's starting with Micro Strategy eventually getting into the S&P 500 and on the ESP side, it's getting into the Russell 2000 and 3000 later in June. How how should we think about ESP's entrance into the small cap indexes as a way for ETH the asset or ESP to have this kind of like passive bid from pensions from uh you know middle-aged people using a

financial adviser. talk to us about kind of like the evolution of ETH getting a passive bid from institutional allocators who serve the average mom and pop and how ETH will kind of be part of their portfolio whether they know it or not as a result of some of these uh major indexes accepting a equity like ESB. >> Yeah. So let me take a step back for your viewers. Um there were six or seven Ethereum DATs that launched last summer. that there were two of us who were able to successfully raise billions of dollars. Um we raised $3 billion. Tom Lee has raised uh much more and we both have something quite unique is we have volume in our case on the NASDAQ in their case on the New York Stock

Exchange. Being included in an index is really important. So for example the Russell 2000 and 3000 indices. There are two ways that this is going to benefit the companies included including sharplink. Uh the first is uh as you said people are um managing uh I think over $150 billion from an index perspective on these two indices where you essentially if you're an asset manager and you have this product you need to have every constituent in every weight to own that index. So I don't really call that passive investing. you're still exposing yourself to midcaps and extended cap stocks but that is what you call passive

flows because if you're into index like we will be at the end of June uh it's necessary when you buy the index you buy sharplink the second thing that's not talked about and maybe it's because I'm a boring tradfi guy is many investors who are buying equities many asset managers are only allowed to buy those that are included in the index meaning if you're not included in the S&P 500 or you're not included in the Russell 2000 or 3000, even if you're an active manager trying to outperform a benchmark, you can't buy that equity, but once they're included in the benchmark, they become part of the universe that you can take an active bet on. So, I think there is those passive flows, but they're also being included

widens the investor base who are allowed to invest in your stock. And we've done um things well. We started um uh when I joined in June July, we were 6% institutionally owned. The rest was retail investors with a heavy Asian fast money retail investor base. Um as of March 31st, we are 47% owned by the largest institutions in the world. Fidelity is our largest investor as of March 31st, which means you have these anchor investors who are buy and hold.

So the combination of index flows being included in the index and being investable and having institutions who are owning you is is a righteous uh is a righteous thing. It doesn't change the price of the underlying and we are largely a beta to the price of ether. >> Understood. Understood. And then I think the other kind of like key point there is that people want to understand what they're getting more out of uh owning esp right over the ETH asset. So that's one thing is you get these passive flows these kind of institutional ownership.

The other thing is that you guys have just announced a onchain yield fund with Galaxy $125 million looking to get more value per share more ETH per share of ESBet using onchain yield strategies. Give us the kind of high level here. What is Joseph Shalom's view on maximizing ETH per share for ESBet owners? So the the good news is for your viewers, you know, Bitcoin is a great asset. I own a bunch of Bitcoin, but it's not natively productive. It's a store of value. You hold it and you hope you're going to get the price appreciation. And in a digital asset treasury, you've seen micro strategy have to do financial engineering in order to get that yield and you gear up the the public stock and that's still

available on Ethereum. The difference is Ether has a native staking rate. We are the only DAT that was like staking over 98% from day one. But we also believe that we have a comparative advantage over you owning spot and trying to stake it yourself or buy the ETF including the ones that I launched when I was at BlackRock. And the advantage is we are not a daily redemption fund. We have permanent capital or near permanent capital which means we can deploy our ether not just in simple staking like we started but you can start participating in riskadjusted yield where you can deploy assets your ether for a multi-year period and in return get

higher rates of return. We did that in January where we allocated about 200 million of our Ether into a liquid restaking uh solution with EtherFi and Consensus Lineia. And by the way, we did that within a qualified custodian. The first time anyone had taken DeFi in a public company and done it within a bank regulated custodian. This is just the next step in the efficient frontier which again if you have permanent capital there are a lot of protocols who are starved for that initial capital to get off the ground and if you can stay in your ETH which is what we're doing and make it available to protocols you can have them overcolateralize that loan

you can have it be with high quality collateral and you can earn an outsized yield on a riskadjusted basis and our partnership with Galaxy I announced our memorandum of intent to launch this fund. We'll identify those protocols and be able to deploy for multi-year periods to those who meet the institutional standards of Galaxy and Sharlink. And then you end up having a portfolio that's largely still majority simplest staked, but we can beat the Ethereum staking rate because of that competitive advantage. And I'm not here to knock the ETFs. They are great products, but if you're a staked ETF, you're likely not going to be able to stake 100% because you have to provide daily liquidity for

investors who want redemptions. And you can't do that if you have a 40 50day unstaking queue on your ETH. So, uh, we can provide, uh, not only the Ethereum staking rate on 100% of our assets, but we can outperform that from a productivity perspective. And for those who can't own the ETF, we're I think a smarter alternative. >> Yeah. And I think that is the competitive advantage that Sharp Link has uh beyond some of these other uh opportunities for exposure. Uh Joseph, want to give you the last word here. We just got a minute or so left. I know you're you're busy championing ETH to all of the uh hungry institutions out there as well, but you mentioned you had some spicy takes. Last word to you. want to make sure that we we give you a

chance to uh to share any more or any spicy takes that you didn't get to already. >> I would just emphasize two things. I think the industry is wildly underestimating the size that tokenized assets is going to be later this year and next year. It took seven years to get to a $30 billion RWA uh tokenization number. you're going to end up seeing individual funds multiple the size of that who are going to be tokenized and it's just going to be step function and Ethereum is going to win 50 to 70% of that. So that's number one.

And number two is for those who feel really crappy. They have a bad bag. They've had a bad experience. They're in the dumpsters. They they want to pivot from crypto to AI. You know, they're just frustrated. At the moment, when retail is capitulating is often the greatest riskreward period in the period that follows. You've seen that in the stock market. You've seen that in in cyclical uh changes. And the smart money doubles down when the sentiment is bad. if you have the tolerance to think beyond a couple of months. So that would be my hot take. Uh focus on the long term.

Look at the signals of what the announcements are and then you know you have to believe that Ethereum is going to win an outsized uh version of this and Ether the token is going to be the in demand token to secure those transactions. But look, it's we're in a winter and you have to have the leadership to see beyond the next month, two months, and three months. That's very hard for retail investors. The smartest institutions are doubling down right now and they're not experimenting. They're allocating capital.

>> It's a bit of a cold front, I would say. Joseph, for you, it's a cold front. Maybe for us Florida boys, it's a bit more of a winter. Thanks for your time, Joe. As always, as always, keep stacking, man. Keep stacking. Uh Ethan is not dead. We'll we're going to be here. Half this podcast isn't selling ETH. The the rest of the haters aren't selling their ETH. Stay strong, Joe. We appreciate your time, man. >> Great to see you guys and I look forward to seeing you soon. >> Absolutely. Thanks again, Joe. See you at Ethan.