Investors have not evaluated in the potential of Ethereum (ETH) to replace the obsolete regulation infrastructure of Wall Street, according to the CEO of Sharplink, Joseph Chalom, and the founder of Eigenlayer Sreeram Kannan.
During a discussion on the Podcast Milk Road of September 15, Chalom, which previously directed the initiatives of the digital assets of Blackrock, described the fundamental friction which afflicted traditional finances.
Current systems require one -day payment periods, create risk -to -counterpart risks and oblige participants in the market to be in a position of guarantee for overnight funding while intermediaries extract the rents from these ineffectiveness.
He said:
“The current ecosystem is quite inaccessible and filled with friction where intermediaries take rents.”
The CEO of Sharplink then contrasted the dynamics with the atomic regulation capacities of Ethereum which execute transactions in a few seconds without risk of counterpart. He also argued that Ethereum represents “a new fundamental fundamental type of public infrastructure, almost as web1, where the Internet was a category of investments”.
He positioned the blockchain as a layer of universal settlement for financial and economic systems.
Programmable financial transformation
The programmable nature of Ethereum allows for a rebalancing of the portfolio via smart contracts, a distribution of dividends in a few minutes rather than in day, and composable transactions, allowing any active to exchange for any other active at any time.
These capacities create what Chalom has described as “the license to win” for institutions that seek efficiency on current systems.
Kannan has extended this vision beyond finance, describing Ethereum as “the verifiable confidence platform” which solves the risk of counterpart by cryptographic verification, rather than relying on institutional guarantees.
He noted that Eigenlayer allows Ethereum to supply additional networks beyond the basic protocol and explained:
“Verifiability is the substrate of society itself.”
Kannan mentioned applications in the verification of AI agents, prediction markets such as polymarket and autonomous systems requiring confidence without human supervision as examples.
Infrastructure investment timing
The two leaders underlined the transition from education to adoption occurring among institutional investors.
Chalom noted that if Bitcoin was to explain the concepts of digital gold, Ethereum demanded explanations of deeper infrastructure which took more time but generated a stronger conviction in the past.
The launch of Ethereum ETF in July 2024 marked an adoption inflection point, cash companies now accumulating around $ 14 to $ 15 billion in ETH assets.
Chalom predicted acceleration beyond the rhythm of the accumulation of stratum bitcoin, because institutional actors recognize the characteristics of Ethereum productive assets through milestone and challenge yields.
