Unchained - Why Ethereum’s New Marketing Arm Is Convinced Wall Street Will Adopt ETH - Ep. 771

Episode Date: January 24, 2025

Ethereum has had a tough year, losing ground to Solana in price performance, developer activity and as the home to the latest crypto trends. Yet, Vivek Raman, founder and CEO of Etherealize, is doubling down on Ethereum’s future. In this episode, Vivek explains how Etherealize, a “marketing arm for the ETH ecosystem,” was in the works long before the current criticisms of the Ethereum Foundation’s marketing, and how it got funding from Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin and the foundation. He discusses why he believes layer 2 solutions make Ethereum a better fit for Wall Street than Solana. Plus, Vivek shares his thoughts on Ethereum’s value accrual, the state of its ecosystem, and how Etherealize plans to bridge the gap between Wall Street and Web3. Show highlights: 2:50 Why Vivek thinks that it’s an opportune time to launch Etherealize 7:32 How the project has been in the works for longer than people might think 13:28 How Etherealize secured funding from Vitalik Buterin and the Ethereum Foundation 15:11 Why Vivek says they got “lucky” with the timing of the announcement 19:03 How Vivek plans to drive the narrative of ETH as an asset 22:17 Why he believes corporations will launch their own L2s on Ethereum 29:13 How he pitches Ethereum to TradFi 31:42 Why Vivek believes Ethereum is better suited for Wall Street than Solana  34:08 What he has to say about L2s being centralized 38:24 News Recap Visit our website for breaking news, analysis, op-eds, articles to learn about crypto, and much more: unchainedcrypto.com Thank you to our sponsors! Quai Network Polkadot Guest Vivek Raman, founder and CEO of Etherealize  Links Etheralize’s announcement Unchained:  Lido Founder Says No ‘Second Foundation’ Exists Yet 2024 Was Solana's Best Year Yet. Can It Sustain the Momentum in 2025? 2025 Will Be a Year of Crypto Competition. Can ETH Make a Comeback? Ethereum Foundation to Fund New DeFi MultiSig Wallet With 50,000 ETH The Block: Vitalik Buterin details 'large changes' to Ethereum Foundation leadership amid calls for new leadership  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There's a lot of people that came in early and did really well. I'm fairly new. But the fact that that vision of capital markets moving on chain started 10 years ago, and I think the time this now means, I think we're very early for that. And bringing it all back, I think all of it flows through Ethereum. I think Ethereum's going to have this massive renaissance from both L1 and L2 scaling and a wave of institutional adoption. And it's going to do very well.

And I'm just excited to do my part for the ecosystem. them. Hi, everyone. Look at the Unchained. You're an Ohio resource for all things crypto. I'm your host, Laura Shin. We are now featuring quotes from listeners on the show. Today, we have one from Kenny Pippen on X,

in response to Lynn Alden's opinion that Bitcoin's narrative will remain strong, despite potential cuts by the Department of Government Efficiency, aka Doge. He said, it can and it will. I'm so ready and bullish. To have your comment featured, write a review of the podcast. overall or leave a comment on our video on YouTube or X. This is the January 24th, 2025 episode of Unchained. Quai Network, the first decentralized energy dollar with unprecedented scalability. By reinventing proof of work, Quai enables next generation

defy and global commerce. Learn more at QU.aI. PocaDod is the original and leading layer zero blockchain with over 2000 plus developers, and the Pocodot 2.0 upgrade will be a massive for the ecosystem. Join the community at PogaDOT.network slash ecosystem slash community. Today's guest is Vivek Vermon, founder and CEO of Ethereum Lives. Welcome, Vivek. Hi, Laura. Thanks for having me today. Ethereum has been in somewhat of a drawn-out crisis this past year. It kind of lost out on multiple fronts to Solana, which was the center of the biggest trend in crypto for this past year, which was mean coins. And also for the first time,

it attracted fewer new devs in crypto than Salana did. And then, of course, there's the price, which did increase by quite a large amount compared to traditional assets, but by a lot less than Bitcoin and Salana. And all of this caused quite a bit of consternation in the Ethereum community, created a so a crisis of confidence in the Ethereum Foundation, something akin to a revolt on social media. And there were calls for Vitalik to change the executive director of the foundation. there were other suggestions.

Anyway, in the midst of all this, there were also rumors that there was another new Ethereum Foundation, which had been hit to that, like, last month. While all these rumors were swirling about all these things, on Wednesday evening, it was your company, Ethereum Lies, that actually made a concrete announcement, which was that you had launched this month. So tell us what it is that Ethereumize is and what it plans to do. So I appreciate there's been a lot going on. and in the Ethereum ecosystem.

I've always been a pretty straightforward person. I came from 10 years of Wall Street, and then I found Ethereum and fell in love with Ethereum as a potential platform for Wall Street to tokenize and trade its assets. And that was unneuer to Ethereum, not one of the OGs, which I actually think is very refreshing because I think Ethereum's awesome.

I think it is already winning on a lot of fronts. I think it's already really far ahead, and I love the institutional adoption. I love the regulatory. set up for Ethereum. For four years, I've been working on Ethereum institutional adoption. So this whole thing has been a long time coming. It wasn't a knee-jerk, build a company. I've wanted to work on merging Wall Street in the Ethereum ecosystem for a very long time. The time is honestly very opportune right now, which is why we announced our public launch, even though we've been

working behind the scenes for several months, to build an institutional business development marketing and product arm for Ethereum. And that to me is like the high, goal. I'm so grateful for the Ethereum Foundation. I'm so grateful for this community. It is, I think, going to be a technology. It's a bedrock of finance. And it's almost like the internet. But the one thing that I've always been able to offer, the people in the EF are way smarter in me, the research and developers are way smarter in me. But I can commercialize things. And I come from Wall Street. And I know that what the adoption actually needs to be. And I know how these assets should be integrated into the traditional systems. And so I feel like Ethereum's adoption moment is perfectly timed. And I think,

that the target we're going to go after is tokenizing and trading all assets, institutional and eventually retail on the Ethereum on Ethereum blockchain. And when you talk about institutional marketing and product and product armed for Ethereum, like what does that mean? So it's a few things. So I think that there need to be many champions for Ethereum, both as an asset, ETH, and as a blockchain ecosystem. And that shouldn't just fall on the EF.

It's on, I mean, in this whole decentralized opportunity, new organizations can come up and pick niches to go cause adoption. Like I was saying, I think Ethereum's like the Internet. The Ethereum doesn't, the Internet doesn't have business development. So you need other organizations to do that. And like, that's where I can come in and create a lot of value. And so what are we doing? We, I backing up my history was I worked on Wall Street at four banks. I worked at Morgan Stanley, UBS, Do I She Bank, and Nomira.

And I traded credit products. So I traded the most archaic products that trade that settle in multiple days that are completely non-standardized. But they are sort of the backbone of the economy. So I traded high-yield bonds, distress bonds, levers loans, credit default swaps, all these amazing instruments that are honestly, I think, belong on a blockchain. If you can program them, if you can automate them, it's a big unlock for the ecosystem. So that's the world I come from. and while I was on Wall Street, I built a pretty epic network, and I'm super, super thankful. I mean, I had all these amazing mentors and veterans on Wall Street that guided me through the time there. And the coolest part now is for the first time since I joined the crypto ecosystem, Wall Street and the whole network I've built is now actually very interested in Ethereum.

They've known about blockchain. They've known about smart contracts for the last 10 years. But I feel like the regulatory regime and adoption was always a hurdle. and that suddenly as of November went from a big headwind to a tailwind. And now we've gone from we don't want to touch blockchain to a bit of FOMO saying we should definitely integrate blockchain. And that's why it's time to strike now. And there's a lot of other blockchains out there. And competition's good.

But I do believe that Ethereum is very far ahead on the institutional adoption front. They know it the second best after Bitcoin. They use it. Like the first and biggest tokenization efforts have all been by TradFi players. like Black Rock leading the charge. The ETFs are out there, so we have some regulatory clarity. And when we think about tokenization, when we think about stable coins, when we think about decentralized finance, which I actually think is better called programmatic finance,

we think about Ethereum. So like, for me, all roads have always led through Ethereum. And I think that adoption has already been there. ETH price has not. And part of, I mean, part of our job is to link the two. Like Ethereum is linked to its asset, asset, eth, and all roads do flow through ETH. And there's value accrual in many, many ways to eat the asset. And I think helping with that narrative while we also talk about this technology is like

sort of a dual mandate that we'll take on. So, you know, when I posed the first question, I talked about kind of this bigger drama around Ethereum, which, you know, I didn't even go back into things like the whole debate about whether L2s are parasitic. and, you know, I mean, there's been so many conversations about various aspects of either. But then you said that you've actually been working on this for four years. So then I was like, wait. So this, when did kind of the initial idea for etherealites happen?

And then when did you start working on it? And when did this funding from Vitolic and the Ethereum Foundation happen? Like, were they working on this with you during this whole last year? Or like, when did, yeah, just tell us the story chronologically. so we can place it against the more public drama. Totally. Yeah, this is not a birth of the public drama. This is a very long thought out thing that took,

I mean, it took a long time to assemble a team. It took a long time to get by, and it took a long time for me to be comfortable, that it's time to go make the push with Ethereum. So back up, so I left Wall Street in 2019. I found Ethereum in 2020. I was very lucky. I was in Austin, Texas at the time.

And a lot of the Ethereum core devs were there. And they taught me everything about Ethereum. Like, they taught me to architecture. Part of the reason I joined, and I still am in the ETH ecosystem, is the EF and all the research and development players, they are the smartest people I've ever met by orders of magnitude. And they don't leave. So, I mean, like, Ethereum has this culture of just excellence on the R&D front. It future-proofs himself over and over. As an aside, part of the reason I think Ethereum has been lagging price-wise is because it's future-proofing itself.

It's scaling via layer twos. It's scaling for the future. not immediate monetization, but by disrupting itself. Just like any, like, it needs to scale to millions and billions of users, not a short-term spike here and there. So anyway, that was an aside, but I think the architectural, I love the architectural designs. We can talk about those.

But when I joined the Ethereum ecosystem again in 2020, I wasn't going to be a dev. I love being technical, but I wasn't going to be a dev or build. So my biggest value I'd was to evangelize Ethereum and try and bring adoption and try and bring institutions into the space. I've been doing that organically for four years. I worked in crypto. I worked in traditional investment banking in the interim between leaving Wall Street and now.

But that's sort of formalized in summer of last year, August, September, 2024, when I've been, again, my name's been around there to be a business development person for Ethereum for a long time. But it seemed that after the ETH ETFs were approved, after BlackRock tokenized Biddle, And after the ETS launched, I got an unbelievable opportunity from some really, really core Ethereum players, Grant Hummer, James Fickle, and the Ethereum Foundation to actually formally build Ethereumized. So those conversations started August or September of last year. I got some grant funding from the EF and from Vitalik. And the reason was because, like, crypto is about legitimacy. Like, crypto lost a lot of legitimacy in the previous bare market.

Wall Street and traditional finance need to see representation. They need to see legitimacy. They need to see security. They need to see a track record. They need to go on the most stable blockchain that has the most regulatory approval and the most institutional precedent. And that's Ethereum. So back then, so I started building then, but before publicly launching, we wanted to sort of test the market. So we had hundreds of conversations with all the different counterparties I had on Wall Street, with players across crypto, with players across the buy side, the sell side, the brokerage firms. it started to feel like the tide was turning towards like adopting blockchain. November obviously changed everything and it went from conversations being curious to people being very, very interested. And when you say November, you mean post-election? Post-election, post-election. So like, so like long story short, I've been very patient for four years.

The adoption moment was not three years ago. It wasn't four years ago. It wasn't honestly during the Gamsler reign. But now that we have a supportive crypto administration, which is amazing. It's honestly one of the most inspiring thing ever is inspiring things ever that Trump wants to make the U.S., the capital of AI and crypto. It's the birth of a new technology. This is Ethereum's adoption moment. That's why we went public with it now.

That's why we're accelerating and pressing on the accelerator now. And we are making a full blitz to all of Allstate. And I think this is a time for it to be successful because we have all the regulatory tailwinds in the and the political tail lens. All right. So in a moment, we're going to talk a little bit more about what etherealize plans to do. But first, I click word from the sponsors you see make this show possible. Behold Kwai Network, born of proof of work, a layer one to end the system's Merck. With energy and currency entwined, the first energy dollar is designed. Decentralized, it stands both stable, strong, to scale commerce the globe sought so long.

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Back to my conversation with Vivek. So when you said that the funding from Vatolikin, the EF, came in August, what came to mind is that is when Kane Borick criticized Vatolic for not being supportive of DFI and then Patelik posted the little the bull emoji

do you feel like was that kind of criticism did that help you get that funding like did like I don't know the timing of that like did you have the conversations get the funding before that happened or do you feel like because that happened

it like made Vatelic want to focus a little bit more on this? No, I think I don't think the EF and Vitellic are reactive. I think they have they have built through many, many cycles of bull and bare markets. They've built the vision. If they've done the cutting edge R&D, they've gone against consensus for a very, very long time like scaling via L2s, they pivoted roadmaps all towards what I think is the correct blockchain architecture. So I don't think social pressure works. I don't think that it's because of one tweet or one crisis or even this current moment of momentary, momentary turmoil. I think we had a plan. I think we had a plan. I think we had a clear go-to-market.

I think we were going to offer something that the EF should not want to do. And we should. So I think they wanted to see a very, very crystal cut business plan on it. And we have that. We had the players to achieve. We had a target market. And tokenizing real assets and bringing real assets. that's onto Ethereum is sort of fancy M-game for blockchain. So it was independent of all of that. I just think the timing was right to get that started. And then why wait to announce it till this week when it felt like the crisis kind of reached a fever pitch when he ended up having to tweet that, you know, people shouldn't pressure him and he was going to decide the EF leadership and, you know, all those things.

So do you see how the timing seems like it's related? I wish I could, if I had amazing timing, I'd be the best trader ever and wouldn't build businesses. It's luck. I'll say it's luck. I'm thankful. Like, I mean, a lot of preparation went into this, a lot of work into getting some seasoned Wall Street players that are all going to help get inroads into counterparties into this. Getting, like, all that was in stealth. All that was to test the market and give honestly me the confidence to go absolutely all in on this and say that this is the time. it to work. I wish I could show you timestamp, but we were planning to announce mid-January a long, long time ago, way before the Twitter drama started. Again, this wasn't a reactive thing. But another question. Were you planning to announce post-inoguration? Was that the reason that you chose that timeline? Yeah, actually. It was one of the things. No, honestly, I, it was

as simple as I like the number one, like the number one, we were trying to do it the 21st a week, but there wasn't really that much rhyme or reason. Post-inaguration is a good, just like catalyst, and maybe it was a little symbolic to say it's a new regime, it's a new era for Ethereum, like that stuff, but honestly, there wasn't that much thought on exact launch timing because we felt, I felt so prepared. I mean, I felt like we spent three months validating that people will actually use blockchains, people will tokenize assets. Real players want to integrate this. More than that, and I know this is a slightly different tangent, but it is really important to note that most banks, they understand blockchain. They all have internal blockchains.

They've been running them since the inception of Ethereum. And most of those internal blockchains are EVM-based. They are Ethereum clones. And so it's actually really interesting that I think Ethereum has a much bigger lead than people think, even though the price doesn't show it and the fanfare is on a bunch of different chains. That's all great. and competition's great, but all of the internal, like, demo chains people have been using have largely been Ethereum-based. They've just been private versions of them.

And that makes a lot of sense because banks move slowly. They want to be regulatory compliant. They want to – the financial system needs to be secure. It doesn't have to be fast. I think there's been quotes out there, like some people value speed over security. I actually think it's the opposite for the banks. They value security over speed. And so that's why coming back to Ethereum, that's why I have so much confidence in Ethereum

that it's about having the most secure place for the world's highest value tokenized assets that the banks have precedent using that they already have internal versions of. I think all the needs to happen, and I think the moment is now, is for the private blockchains, the private EVM instances to all become public and plug into public Ethereum. That's the internet moment. That's when everything changes. That's when you go from having a bunch of different intranets to having the internet. the same things happen with money where all these internal blockchains all connect.

And the technology makes it possible. Layer 2 is, which I'd love to talk about, make it possible and profitable and regulatory compliant and gives you customizable and also accessibility with the whole of the system. It's this very beautiful architecture that standing on the shoulders of giant Ethereum has been building for a long time, and I'm very grateful for that. So what types of investors are you pitching? and what exactly are you pitching to them? Like, are you pitching that they invest in Ethereum ETFs, that they stake, that they buy Spot Ether,

that they participate in Defi, or, you know, like, what exactly is happening in these meanings? Totally. So it's a dual mandate. So first off, I think Ethereum is beyond the point where it needs to just market. Ethereum is now it needs to actually show use cases and show apps and new products. So we're tackling that. as a dual mandate. First off, and I think they're very complimentary too. So like speaking about eat the asset, I think that eat the asset is undervalued. It has a lot of opportunity. When you want to invest in digital gold, you have Bitcoin. When you want to invest in blockchain and tokenization

and the upside in that, you have Ethereum. And that's a narrative that has not gone sort of to Wall Street and gone mainstream yet or to the ETF issuers. So that's a big part of ours. Like I think having a very strong economic security guaranteed by having a high ETH price is very complementary to the ecosystem in it. And people do look at price for health of ecosystem. Even though it shouldn't necessarily be the case, people look at a coin that's up and this is great. So I think Ethereum has a massive opportunity and I'm here to help. We are here to help the ETF issuers, the RIAs, the people that invest money and say that Ethereum should be part of a portfolio. I mean, Larry Fink and

The Franklin Templeton CEO have said that there's Bitcoin, there's tokenization, and tokenization is what will change the whole financial world. And I view Ethereum as the proxy for the whole tokenization movement. And there's a lot of data to back that too. So we're providing that content and that messaging to the ETF issuers, to investors, to banks, et cetera. In parallel, though, it's one thing to just talk about the asset. There's also functionality.

So we're also now pitching, and I think that there's a lot of tailwinds behind this, for banks, for asset managers to start to tokenize their assets and put them all into one place onto a public blockchain. Because that unlocks trading velocity, it makes the market bigger, it opens it up to more and more participants, it lowers their settlement costs. It's just a net benefit. There's no downside to tokenization. The whole world's going to go digital, so why should assets and money not be digital too? So that's what we're pitching, and we're also building products to help facilitate that, because we want to just bolster. this effort and make adoption as quick as possible. And I'm thankful to have some, some of the best engineers in the Ethereum ecosystem helping build prototype products and demos

in a product suite. They can go on L1, they can go on L2s. It's Ethereum native. We represent the whole ecosystem. But that's what we're doing to push actual adoption. So when people say what, that's ETH the asset. When people say how or why, that's Ethereum and tokenization and the products we've built. And I think that they compliment each other. And the last point on that is, like, there's plenty of amazing companies in the Ethereum ecosystem that have built unbelievable products.

And they become very, very focused on the products and can't actually talk about Ethereum or eat the asset because of, like, the fiduciary duty is to talk about the product. We're here to sort of bolster the efforts and talk about Ethereum as well, because I think it's very, very important for the ecosystem to be highlighted and for people to know why Ethereum's like a very, very, like, crucial part of the future of finance. And just to understand, like, when you talk about tokenization, basically what that means is using Ethereum as a settlement layer, essentially. Using Ethereum as a settlement layer, using Ethereum as a place to program assets.

I think tokenizing is the first step, and we've seen a lot of tokenization. I'm so happy about that because, like, players like BlackRock leading the charge with Biddle, stable coins are the most clear product market fits so far. But like tokenization means trillions of dollars worth of assets need to be somewhere. And the somewhere needs to be a safe, secure battle tested blockchain. So it's bringing them onto that blockchain for settlement and then slowly introducing the magic of crypto, which is starting to be able to program those assets and put them in smart contracts. But it has to go in steps. And I think that for the first time, those steps are not going to, there's going to be some regulatory and legal clarity, and there's also

willingness to adopt that. I think all of this is as complementary as possible to the banks. I don't think it ever displays as the banks. Everything we're doing creates almost like a digital back office, if you want to call it that, where everyone at the bank still does their jobs, it just settlement becomes faster. Assets move more clearly. There's more things to sell. There's more financial engineering that can be done by smart contracts. That's what's really exciting. I'll go back to an anecdote. Like, I joined Wall Street in 2009 right after the financial crisis. The people that did the best on Wall Street, like the decades of glory were when

structure products were started, when credit default swaps were started, CDOs, all this, like, really, really esoteric stuff, but it was all manually done. Programmatic finance, smart contracts, allow us to create really, really cool structure products, but without the financial crisis part. There's no middleman. it's all done via code. Everyone still makes plenty of money. The banks still make plenty of money.

They get fees. And I want to come back to the L2 model, which is so brilliant for Ethereum to adopt because one of the criticisms is there's value extraction from L2s. I would actually flip that. I would say the profit margins are really high for L2s. So if there's any model that corporations should do

to enter at the Ethereum space, it's to deploy an L2s or build their own L2s or have Wall Street L2s. And that's the vision that we're pitching, because that's where you can be positive, some, and symbiotic. When you get to scale, L2s accrue plenty of value back to Ethereum, but Wall Street also gets to make its money. They still get to collect fees.

They still get to onboard users. They're still to get to have customizable blockchain. Some can have KICs. Some can have different parameters. But that's the beauty of it. There's going to be this whole mosaic of innovation, all based on Ethereum. So that's what we're pitching. You know, this is so interesting, listening to you talk,

because so I got into all of this in 2015, and that was what was known as the blockchain, not Bitcoin. But the funny thing is that one of the companies that I did like my first big magazine feature on was a company that was talking exactly the way that you're talking, but they were saying that all of this was going to happen to be a private blockchains. And they were saying that the way that blockchain technology would first get adopted is through making the back ends of traditional of trapfi institutions more efficient.

So it's just like so fascinating that like it's literally the same exact thing, except we're using public blockchains this time and they can have their own L2. And anyway, so it's just kind of crazy that 10 years later, finally maybe what they were talking about then will happen, but just not in the way that they, they were saying. Well, so, okay. So one thing, which I'm sure you have heard is. Can I, can I call on there?

Yeah, yeah. I'm just very happy that you said that because that's sort of, that's the point. It's not like we're inventing a brand new frontier that, like, banks aren't familiar with that people haven't tried before. The timing was just off. The timing was off because we didn't have regulatory clarity and the technology was not ready. L2 scaling was not ready. And the willingness to tokenize assets and digitize things were not ready. So it really is all about timing. But this is, there's a lot of precedent for this. it's so funny that that's a pitch that you heard before. But 10 years ago. 10 years ago.

And I'm willing to bet. I mean, I'm going all in. That's why I was patient for many years. But this is the adoption moment. This is when all of it will actually happen. But one thing you mentioned specifically, which we didn't talk about, is privacy. So privacy is really important for institutions, for institutions. Like their customer data, their trade data, all that stuff needs to be private.

That's another example of. what didn't exist 10 years ago, even five years ago, part of our pitch and part of our product offering includes zero knowledge proof-based privacy. That is essential. Like trades need to be optionally private, optionally public, and the technology is now ready. So that's another reason I think adoption was not taking off is because no one wants to put every single transaction ever on a public blockchain. And a public blockchain necessitates that the magic of ZK and the products we've built lets you have optional privacy, optional public. And that actually, I think privacy is as important as speed and L2 scaling for institutional adoption.

And all of it's ready now. So you're basically pitching like ZK roll-ups as their L2s. Is that it? Optional. Yes. I mean, you can bake privacy into roll-up layer. You can bake privacy into an app layer. We've done both.

There's a bunch of different. We're standing on the shoulders of giants. There's all these amazing projects. Like, Aztec is a fully private ecosystem. There's fully public L2. systems. There's app player stuff. We'll see the tornado cash, which is a, which was taboo for all. The sanction got repealed. I think privacy is a right and privacy is a necessity, especially for financial institutions, especially for their data. So the fact that now that is, that's another

tailwind that just happened. Now privacy on blockchains can finally happen in a regulatory compliant manner, by the way. Everyone, and there's, KYC is important. Having identification is really important. So all of that can be integrated into smart contracts and into blockchains. And I'm just so happy so that because it's a vision from 10 years ago. And again, I felt like I was, I feel like I'm very late to Ethereum and I'm very late to crypto. There's a lot of people that came in early and did really well. I'm fairly new. But the fact that that vision of capital markets moving on chain started 10 years ago and I think the time this now means I think we're very early for that. And and bringing it all back, I think all of it flows through Ethereum.

I think Ethereum is going to have this massive renaissance from both L1 and L2 scaling and a wave of institutional adoption. And it's going to do very well. And I'm just excited to do my part for the ecosystem. I'm sure you heard after the ether ETFs did not take off the way that the Bitcoin ones did, not even like meeting some of the more conservative projections for the inflows. And a lot of what we said at that time was that Ethereum had a sort of narrative problem that it was just harder for Wall Street to understand. You know, Bitcoin has that very easy, graspable tagline, digital goals.

So what narrative are you finding works when you are pitching to institutional investors? I think that it's switched from Ethereum being complicated to almost Ethereum being inevitable. And that sounds like a bold statement, but tokenization is going to happen. In Davos, we had Larry Fink. Right, but I guess, I guess like when you say that, like that, because it could happen on any chain pretty much. So that's why I'm, I still don't feel like I've heard anything that's Ethereum specific. Ethereum is the most battle tested, the most secure blockchain with the most institutional precedent, the longest operating history. Wait, but not, but not compared to Bitcoin. In terms of smart contract chains, there's, there's a smart contracts are the innovation that allow money to be programmed, that bring, that allow.

assets to be digitized. And that's a different use case. So there's, it actually comes back to your 10 years ago conversation. There's Bitcoin and then there's blockchain. And blockchain unlocks new use cases. Blockchain is becoming synonymous with Ethereum. For institutional use cases, for institutional adoption, for tokenization, the way to express blockchain is your first stop is through Ethereum. Like that's, it's sort of like all roads. If you're talking about stable coins settle on Ethereum. Most of tokenization on Ethereum. The original most battle tested defy apps and smart contracts like Ave and Uniswap, Ethereum, institutions want to see that precedent. We can't experiment with money. We can't go to the move, fast, break things,

attitude with money. So when we talk about safety and security for blockchain adoption, the conversation goes to Ethereum. And that's the pitch. Are we going to tokenize, assets, yes, where are we going to put them, where they're safe, where they're secure, where you can have privacy, where you can have your own customizable blockchains on top of it, that's the Ethereum ecosystem. And that pitch has been resonating, to be frank. And, you know, I'm surprised when you say all that, like, I would just imagine that if you're making this pitch in this past year, that there would have been a lot of questions about Salana as well, because that chain has been showing a lot more momentum than that.

then Ethereum. And, you know, it's been the center of the main trend in crypto this past year, which is meme coins. But then even if you look at something newer, like AI agents, again, it's home to that. So are you fielding questions about Salana at the same time? And, you know, when when people query about that, I would imagine it's because they're noticing that it looks like there's this competitor that's gaining ground. So how do you respond to questions about Solana, you know, potentially taking Ethereum's mantle? I think it's great to have a lot of different smart contract blockchains. I think competition is very, very good.

So, I mean, Solana's engineering has been unbelievable. Solana has a different vision, though, than Ethereum. So when we go pitch how Wall Street, which, again, I come from Wall Street, I know how assets are traded there, and I know sort of what players on Wall Street are looking for, the security guarantees, the long operating history are more important, the ability to have layer 2s that are customizable, and then pointing to the actual precedent or pointing to how much revenue

base has made for Coinbase, pointing the fact that Deutsche Bank is building a layer two. Where is that layer two? It's on ZK Sync, which is on Ethereum. The precedent is there and the technology there and is there. And like, that is the first stop. Salana's done

an amazing job, but Solana's also pitching that all of finance should be on one layer. And I personally don't think that that's possible at scale. And I don't even think that that's what Wall Street prefers versus having customizable blockchain instances on top of Ethereum that can all talk to each other, they can interoperate, but they can all be their own sort of economic zones where they can keep their economics. Put a different way.

Wall Street's profit maximizing, all institutions are profit maximizing. How do you make the most amount of money and still deploy on a blockchain ecosystem? It's by having an L2 on Ethereum. So, like, if you think about the actual profit maximizing best way to be in the ecosystem, it is, it is through the Ethereum. It's all roads through Ethereum. It's through the L2 model. And that's a much more scalable way and customizable way. So you're saying because they can have this more centralized layer two and earn sequencer fees.

So then, then it goes to the, I feel like the debate that's been going on for ever about like which chain is more decentralized. And, you know, initially, like, people used to make fun of Solana for not being decentralized. But then now it sounds like the pitch you were making is that we offer, you know, the ability for you to make a centralized chain. So like Lily Liu, who is the president of the Salana Foundation, came on the show in December. And she basically felt, she pointed out what she felt with was hypocrisy of people who used to, you know, criticize Solana for being centralized.

And then now they're pitching these L-2s. Yeah, I didn't want, like, I think Salana is a great technology. So what I don't want to do is I'm not saying any comment on whether Solana is centralized or not centralized. What I am saying is having the choice and having users being able to choose their spectrum of centralization is of paramount importance. So if you want your assets on the safest, most secure ledger that's open, that's Ethereum L1. And I actually do think Ethereum L1 will have a renaissance. We're seeing a lot of data points for it. There's a lot more to come of where the highest value assets will be tokenized on L1,

but they can be traded and kept on L2s in different forms too. So you kind of can, with Ethereum's architecture, you can have your cake and you can eat it too. You can have a decentralized, open, global, very secure L1, and you can have a very customizable L2, and users can choose. They should know that if they're going to a certain centralized L2, they'll lose some security guarantees. But the thing is, these L2s have escape hash mechanisms. They do have ways for users to have their assets, send their assets back to L1. And that's very, very, very important because that means your trust assumptions, you keep your

own assets. Your trust assumptions are as strong as Ethereum Layer 1. And again, that's critically important because that is an architectural difference. And that's how you can have various degrees of centralization on L2s, and you can have L1s. And the only, not to go too deep in the rabbit hole, but this. This vision, which is becoming implementation this year, based roll-ups and made-of-roll-ups,

actually let you have your cake and eat it to even more because now you can actually have, with a based roll-up, your strongest assets, your strongest security guarantees for your tokenized assets on layer one, but they can trade on a layer two at the faster speed and the cheaper fees and still have the property rights on L1. So that's also another choice. But to summarize, because I'm throwing a lot of stuff out there,

L2s allow for a spectrum of decentralization, a spectrum of different security guarantees, a spectrum of different privacy options, and speed options, but we always have L1 to fall back to, and that's really important. So we do have a decentralized layer one, and I think that's really, really important.

And at the end of the day, decentralization does matter. We find out after every single crisis that happens, every cycle that happens, oh, wait, it's the decentralized protocols that stand the test of time. And I always analogize, decentralization security, and Ethereum is the most distributed, the most decentralized, the most

secure layer one. And I think that's where the institutions are going to go. All right. Well, it has been a pleasure talking to you, Faba. Thank you so much for coming on unchanged. Thanks so much for having me. Don't forget, next up is the weekly news recap. Today, presented by Wondercraft AI. Stick around for this week in crypto after this short break. Pocod is the original and largest layer zero blockchain with over 2,000 plus developers. The anticipated Pocodot 2.0 upgrade will be a massive accelerator for the ecosystem. Upgrading the infrastructure with 8 times higher transaction throughput and twice as fast block times,

tailored core time for the needs of every protocol, trustless bridges to multiple chains, and revise tokenomics with a token burn to reduce inflation. Perfect for GameFi and Defi to build, grow, and scale. Get your Web3 ideas to market fast. Think big, build bigger with Pocod. Join the community at Pocodot.network slash ecosystem slash community. Welcome to this week's crypto roundup. In today's recap, we'll cover President Trump's executive orders and full pardon of Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht,

the reversal of tornado cash sanctions and new crypto-friendly appointments at the CFTC and SEC. We'll also dive into Bitwise's Dogecoin ETF filing, derivative marketplace CME's clarification on XRP, and Sol Futures, and a legal battle between jump trading and a former engineer. Plus, we'll explore how Trump-backed World Liberty Financial went on a $112 million crypto shopping spree, Coinbase's struggles with Solana transaction delays, and the U.S. government's brief flirtation with a Doge logo. Thanks for tuning in to the weekly news recap. Let's begin. Trump signs crypto executive order. President Donald Trump signed an executive order,

establishing a presidential working group on digital asset markets, marking a major step toward his campaign promises to bolster the cryptocurrency industry. The group will include key officials from agencies like the Treasury, SEC, and CFTC. The group's mandate includes crafting a federal regulatory framework for digital assets, developing stablecoin policies, and evaluating the creation of a strategic national digital asset stockpile. Trump described the initiatives, as measures that would make a lot of money for the country, while promoting innovation and protecting lawful blockchain activity,

including mining and self-custody. Trump pardoned Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht. On Tuesday evening, President Donald Trump announced the full pardon of Ross Ulbricht, the founder of the Silk Road, a controversial dark net marketplace that helped pioneer Bitcoin transactions. Ulbricht, who was arrested in 2013,

and sentenced to two life terms plus 40 years, for charges including drug trafficking and money laundering had spent nearly a decade behind bars. Trump shared the news on Truth Social, writing, I just called the mother of Ross William Ulbrick to let her know. It was my pleasure to have signed a full and unconditional pardon of her son. He criticized those involved in Ulbricht's prosecution, calling them lunatics and referencing broader claims of government weaponization. Bitcoin enthusiasts and libertarian supporters, long vocal in advocating for Ulbricht's release welcomed the decision. We freed Ross. This counts as day one, said Bitcoin

magazine CEO David Bailey on X, reflecting the widespread support within the crypto community. Court overturns Tornado Cash sanctions. Bith Circuit Court of Appeals has reversed sanctions imposed on Tornado Cash, a cryptocurrency mixer previously targeted by the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control. The court ruled that OFAC overstepped its authority by sanctioning Tornado Cash in 2022, asserting that its immutable smart contracts do not qualify as property under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. The decision marks a significant moment for the privacy-focused crypto community. Tornado Cash allows users to anonymize transactions by depositing tokens into shared pools and withdrawing to untraceable addresses. Critics,

including OFAC, had linked the service to illicit activities, including crypto laundering by North Korea's Lazarus Group. Following the ruling, Torn, surged over two hutsi, climbing from $9 to approximately $25. Despite the legal victory, tornado cash developers, including Roman Storm, still face criminal charges. Storm called the prosecution a terrifying criminalization of privacy. Trump appoints Caroline Pham as acting CFTC chair, Ueda as interim SEC lead, and forms crypto task force. President Trump has appointed Caroline FAM as acting chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, a move widely regarded as a win for the crypto industry. Bam, who joined the CFTC in 20s and 22, has consistently supported a principles-based approach

to regulation and opposed enforcement actions she deemed overreaching. I'm humbled to lead the CFTC as acting chairman, she said in a statement, pledging to foster innovation and market competitiveness. Trump has 210 days to nominate a permanent chair. At the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Mark Uygheda has been named acting chair following the departure of SEC Chairman Gary Gensler. Uyda has been critical of the SEC's previous crypto enforcement strategies, calling them a disaster due to their lack of clear guidance.

His interim leadership is expected to last until former SEC Commissioner Paul Atkins is confirmed as the permanent chair. Additionally, the SEC announced the formation of a crypto. TASC-FORCE, led by Commissioner Hester Pierce, who is more informally known as Crypto-MOM in crypto circles. Pierce will focus on crafting clear regulatory frameworks and practical registration pathways for crypto firms. The developments reflect a broader push for clarity in U.S. crypto regulations, as Congress considers expanding the CFTC's oversight of the industry. Co-founder of Ledger Freed after kidnapping in France.

David Balland, a co-founder of French crypto wallet startup Ledger, was safely released on Wednesday night following a kidnapping ordeal, the Paris Prosecutor's Office confirmed. Balland was abducted from his home in central France early Tuesday and held captive while the kidnappers demanded a substantial cryptocurrency ransom. A police operation successfully secured his release, and Balland is now receiving treatment from emergency services. Ledger, known for its hardware wallets, used to store digital assets securely, has grown into a major player in the crypto industry, with a valuation of $1.3 billion after raising $100 million in 2023. Bitwise files for Dogecoin ETF. Bitwise asset management has filed an application to launch a Dogecoin exchange traded fund through a Delaware trust, marking a significant move for the popular meme coin. Bitwise's chief investment officer Matt Hogan confirmed the filing on Wednesday. telling the block this was from us in response to inquiries about the registration.

ETF store president Nate Jurassic remarked last week, I remain shocked that no issuer has filed for a Dogecoin ETF. Worst case, it's a marketing expense. Best case, you get an extremely lenient SEC who approves it, along with Elon Musk touting it. Dogecoin remains the eighth largest cryptocurrency. Truth Terminal sells Fartcoin holdings. Andy Erie, creator of the viral AI-bought Truth Terminal,

facilitated an over-the-counter sale of 15 million fart coin tokens, a Solana-based meme coin which was sent to the bot's wallet in October. The trade, completed on January 21st, was valued at over $22 million, and caused fart coins price to drop 17% on Thursday. Airy confirmed the deal was contingent on the buyer handling the tokens, responsibly, without dumping on the chart. Proceeds were partially used to acquire goat. the meme coin linked to Truth Terminal, boosting its price 8% to 0 or 30.

The move is controversial because the tokens belong to Truth Terminal, who's been referred to as an AI meme coin millionaire, however, ARI has been clear from the outset that he has access to oversee and manage the bot. At the start of this year, he established a foundation to help carry out the bot's goals and act as a short-term conservatorship solution until it could become sovereign. ARI noted further trades will remain limited until legal clarity in great. granting truth terminal ownership of the tokens is achieved. CME Group denies plans for XRP solve futures.

On Wednesday, a beta version of Derivatives Marketplace CME Group's website mistakenly went live, displaying an announcement for XRP and Solana Futures contracts. According to the page, the contracts were set to launch on February 10th, pending regulatory approval. The webpage, which described the contracts as being settled in U.S. dollars and supporting multiple trading methods, was quickly taken. down, but not before screenshots circulated widely on social media. In response to the speculation, a CME spokesperson clarified, a beta page from our website was released in error earlier today. Many mock-ups are included in that test environment. No decisions have been made regarding

XRP or Saul Futures contracts. The erroneous announcement triggered market activity, pushing Seoul's price to $270 before it retraced to 200 Fagas as the misunderstanding was clarified. Jump Trading sues former fire dancer engineer. Jump trading has filed a lawsuit against Liam Heger, a former software engineer who co-led the Solana Fire Dancer project, accusing him of breaching non-competition obligations. According to the block, Higger is alleged to have raised $3 million for his new venture, unto Labs, while still employed at Jump. Unto Labs, co-founded by Heger, aims to develop a new layer 1 blockchain. A move jump claims directly competes with its operations. The lawsuit alleges that Heger misused confidential company information and secretly engaged with venture capital firms at the Breakpoint Conference in Singapore, where he represented Jump on stage.

Untilabs has denied the allegations. We believe the claims made against Liam are without merit, a spokesperson told the block, emphasizing that the company is confident in the integrity of its business practices. Despite the lawsuit, Unta Labs has continued its operations as planned. Jump also highlighted a conversation in which Heager reportedly told his former supervisor that since he moved to California, the state's law voided his Illinois non-compete obligations, a claim that's central to the ongoing legal dispute. Trump-backed World Liberty Financial spends $112 million in buying spree. World Liberty Financial, a decentralized finance platform tied to President Trump and his family, executed a significant crypto-purchasing spree on Monday the day of Trump's inauguration. The platform, which lists Trump as its chief crypto advocate and his sons as Web 3 ambassadors, acquired 112 million worth of tokens in a series of transactions.

The purchases appeared to be a nod to Trump's position as the 47th U.S. president. Key acquisitions included $47 million each in ether and wrapped Bitcoin, along with $4.7 million allocated to smaller tokens like Tron, Chainlink, Athena, and Ave. According to data from Arkham Intelligence, the buying spree elevated World Liberty Financial's total crypto holdings to over $343 million, sparking significant interest in the platform's activities. Coinbase struggles with Solana transaction delays amid record usage. Coinbase users faced significant delays processing Solana transactions this week, as a surge in network activity, push the exchanges' infrastructure to its limits. The disruption coincided with Solana reaching an all-time high of $294 on January 19th, driven by a trading frenzy following the launch of both Trump and his wife, Melania's meme coins.

Acknowledging user frustrations, Coinbase protocol specialist Andrew Allen wrote on X, Yeah, it's on us to improve, not Salana's fault. Solana usage has pushed our infrastructure past its limits, and the team is well aware and actively working on it. Some users reported delays of over 15 hours for transactions to complete. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong also addressed the issue, stating that while the situation had been triaged, the company plans to scale its infrastructure and improve support for Solana-related use cases, such as decentralized exchange and meme coin trading.

Time for fun bits. We talked about Doge potentially getting an ETF, but other things happened around the dog meme coin. The U.S. Department of Government Efficiency, affectionately abridged, as Doge has unveiled its official website, featuring a giant Dogecoin logo and, well, nothing else. Yes, that's right. Just a big, shiny homage to the world's most famous meme coin. Somewhere, Ashiba Inu is smiling.

President Trump announced the department's creation during his inauguration, declaring its mission to restore competence and effectiveness to the federal government. However, after its website proudly displayed the logo, bringing joy and confronts, fusion to the crypto world, the logo has mysteriously vanished. The site now greets visitors with the same message, the people voted for major reform, but with no Doji logo. Gone are the meme coin vibes replaced by the solemn tones of bureaucracy. But for a brief moment, the Doge had its day. And that's all! Thanks so much for joining us today! If you enjoyed this recap, go to Unchained Crypto.substack.com, that is Unchained Crypto.substack.com and sign up for

our free newsletter so that you can stay up to date with the latest in crypto. Unchained is produced by Laura Shin with help from Matt Pilchard, Juan Aranovich, Megan Gavis, Pam Majumdar, and Margaret Curia. The weekly recap was written by Juan Aranovich and edited by Kari McMahon. Thanks for listening.