Investors have not priced in the potential of Ethereum (ETH) to replace the outdated settlement infrastructure of Wall Street, according to Sharplink CEO Joseph Chalom and founder of Ownlaer Sereeram Kannan.
During a Melkweg on September 15 podcast discussionChalom, which previously led BlackRock’s digital assets initiatives, outlined the fundamental friction that plays too much too much too much too much.
Current systems require a day -long settlement periods, create counterparty risks and force market participants to place collateral for overnight financing, while intermediaries extract rental prices from these inefficiencies.
He explained:
“The current ecosystem is quite inaccessible and filled with friction where intermediaries take rental prices.”
Sharplink CEO then contrasted the dynamics with Ethereum’s atomic settlement options that are performed in seconds in seconds without a counterparty risk. He also argued that Ethereum represents “an emerging fundamental new type of public infrastructure, almost as web1, where the internet was a category of investments.”
He positioned the blockchain as a universal layer of settlement for both financial and economic systems.
Programmable financial transformation
Due to the programmable nature of Ethereum, portfolio can again be balanced through smart contracts, dividend distribution in minutes instead of days and composite transactions, so that an active can act against another at any time.
These possibilities create what Chalom described as “the license to win” for institutions that seek efficiency compared to the current systems.
Kannan expanded this vision further than finance and described Ethereum as “the platform for verifiable trust” that resolves the risk of counterparty due to cryptographic verification, rather than trusting institutional guarantees.
He noted that Echtlayer Ethereum enables extra networks to go further than the basic protocol, and explained:
“Verifiability is the substrate of society itself.”
Kannan mentioned applications in AI agent verification, prediction markets such as polymarket and autonomous systems that require trust without human supervision as examples.
Infrastructure Investment Stiming
Both managers emphasized the transition from education to adoption that takes place under institutional investors.
Chalom noted that although Bitcoin had to explain the explanation of digital gold concepts, Ethereum deeper infrastructure statements demanded more time but generated a stronger conviction once it understood.
The launch of Ethereum ETFs in July 2024 marked a bending point of adoptions, in which Treasury companies now collected around $ 14-15 billion in ETH companies.
Chalom predicted acceleration further than the Bitcoin accumulation pace of the strategy, since institutional players recognize Ethereum’s productive activa treatments by setting up and Defi yields.
