Ethereum's Strategy to Win Over Wall Street | Joe Lubin & Danny Ryan

Summary

Bankless Podcast Episode Summary

Episode: Ethereum's Strategy to Win Over Wall Street | Joe Lubin & Danny Ryan
Date: July 8, 2025

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Overview

This episode delivers a deep dive into Ethereum’s strategic positioning as it seeks traction with Wall Street and institutional finance. Host David Hoffman moderates a candid and sometimes revelatory conversation between Danny Ryan (Etherealize, pivotal developer in the Merge) and Joseph Lubin (Consensys founder, SBet architect). The discussion navigates regulatory battles with the SEC, Ethereum’s leadership and organizational evolution, Wall Street’s changing perception of decentralization, and bold moves to bring ETH to corporate treasuries. It also deals with Ethereum’s value propositions in a maturing crypto landscape and the next necessary steps to ensure its global adoption.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Ethereum's Regulatory Crossfire and Resilience

• Danny's Return and Regulatory Stress:
  • Danny Ryan details how, immediately upon taking a sabbatical, he was subpoenaed by the SEC regarding his work building Ethereum’s open source protocols ([04:12]).
  • “I stepped away on Friday and on Sunday the SEC served me... Some sort of investigation around the things that I've worked on, building open source protocols. But that ended up getting dropped. The political tides changed.” — Danny Ryan ([04:38])
• SEC's Focus on Ethereum:
  • Joseph Lubin asserts Ethereum’s rigorous decentralization made it the primary target for the SEC, which he argues was influenced by political motives to hinder Ethereum’s process ([07:55]).
  • “Chair Gensler was given a mandate, probably by Elizabeth Warren, to kill, slow, or co-opt the Ethereum technology and is specifically more focused on Ethereum because Ethereum represented rigorous decentralization and real disintermediation.” — Joseph Lubin ([08:04])
• Defensive Legal Action:
  • Lubin explains his company's decision to sue the SEC came after realizing key Ethereum contributors were being individually targeted.
  • “When we saw that a bunch of researchers were getting subpoenas, that's when we decided to sue the SEC.” — Joseph Lubin ([09:45])

2. Ethereum’s Value Proposition and Wall Street Adoption

• Wall Street’s Shift in Perception:
  • Danny emphasizes that institutions are beginning to appreciate Ethereum’s values—especially decentralization and credible neutrality—not for ideological reasons, but because it reduces their counterparty risk.
  • “Their lens to the world is, is counterparty risk and the reduction or elimination of it. And a decentralized and resilient platform represents that.” — Danny Ryan ([15:02])
• Etherealize's Consulting Approach:
  • Ryan describes Etherealize's mission as bridging education and onboarding for traditional finance actors interested in Ethereum ([14:47]).
• Ethereum as Existential Threat & Catalyst:
  • Lubin posits Ethereum is an “existential threat to the current system of the world” and must drive its evolution ([12:20]).
  • He warns that centralization via custodians or ETFs could undermine both Bitcoin and Ethereum.

3. Ethereum's Direction, Leadership, and Organizational Evolution

• Post-Merge Trajectory and Culture:
  • Discussion of Ethereum’s move from a focus on decentralization and protocol resilience (achieved through the Merge and distributed development) to prioritizing adoption and real-world impact ([06:40]).
• Shifts within the Ethereum Foundation (EF):
  • New leadership and a shift from mere protocol shipping to outward-focused, product-driven approaches are highlighted ([17:20]).
  • “This is the critical juncture... Either [the world] onboards onto a decentralized permissionless stratum for the foundation of the next generation… or we don't... and it's ours to lose.” — Danny Ryan ([17:34])
• Vitalik’s Leadership Style:
  • Both guests respect Vitalik’s principled, non-hierarchical approach and note he purposely resists command-and-control centralization.
  • “He doesn't lead by command and control. He leads by example and making suggestions and influencing people based on merits.” — Joseph Lubin ([31:26])
• Need for Collective Action:
  • Danny: While Vitalik and EF have set the tone, the wider ecosystem (companies, communities, builders) must now fill gaps in engagement, especially around mainstream outreach ([28:59]).

4. Market Strategy: ETH as Corporate Treasury Asset

• SBet and ETH Accumulation:
  • Lubin describes SBet as “the Ethereum version of MicroStrategy.” The goal: accumulate sizable ETH treasuries and offer institutional-grade access to ETH and DeFi strategies ([33:58]).
  • “We are doing our part and we're going to continually raise money and accumulate ether. We're already fully staked, we're going to do some restaking and some defi. And we're going to enable people, consumers and institutions to access the best professional asset managers in the Ethereum ecosystem.” — Joseph Lubin ([36:37])
• Macro Backdrop:
  • Lubin contextualizes the current crypto push as a response to global monetary regime changes and US fiscal policies. He predicts governments and corporations will turn to assets like ETH for stability ([33:58]).

5. Ethereum’s Infrastructure Strengths... & Weaknesses

• Infrastructure vs. Application Layer:
  • Both guests agree Ethereum has excelled at building robust infrastructure—multi-client architecture, L2 scaling, etc.—but urgently needs to develop user-facing apps solving real problems ([22:43]).
  • “What we really need to do today ... is we need to solve problems... How can we make users lives better and actually build, you know, the products and the protocols on top of this infrastructure for the world? ... that's going to be the make or break.” — Danny Ryan ([22:43])
• Ecosystem Re-energized:
  • Lubin draws a parallel to AI: Just as OpenAI’s disruption galvanized Google, competition from Bitcoin, Solana, and regulatory battles have “woken up” Ethereum ([23:40]).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On SEC’s crackdown:
  • “Ethereum is an existential threat to the current system of the world and it needs to help the current system of the world transform itself.” — Joseph Lubin ([12:21])
• On Ethereum’s values for Wall Street:
  • “Surprisingly, their lens to the world is counterparty risk... a decentralized and resilient platform represents that.” — Danny Ryan ([15:02])
• On Ethereum’s pivot:
  • “We've built something incredible but adoption actually changing the world, we don't get that for free.” — Danny Ryan ([17:20])
• On the leadership paradox:
  • “That's just not what we're going to get out of Vitalik and that's not honestly what we need from Vitalik.” — Danny Ryan ([28:59])
• On Ethereum’s future in finance:
  • “We are doing our part and we're going to continually raise money and accumulate ether. We're already fully staked, we're going to do some restaking and some defi.” — Joseph Lubin ([36:37])
• On immediate goals:
  • “We need to be solving problems and we need to be talking to our users, whether they're enterprises or just consumers.” — Joseph Lubin ([23:40])

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Important Timestamps

• 03:02: Introduction & Danny Ryan recounts post-Merge sabbatical and SEC subpoena
• 04:35: SEC’s ambiguous investigation into EF contributors
• 07:55: Joseph Lubin details Gensler’s and Elizabeth Warren’s anti-Ethereum mandate
• 11:20: Ethereum as the SEC’s “biggest fish” and threat to status quo
• 14:47: Danny Ryan on Wall Street’s recognition of decentralization as risk mitigation
• 17:20: Ryan on EF’s pivot, leadership changes, and ecosystem’s new focus
• 19:15: Lubin’s “broadband moment” analogy; US institutions “chomping at the bit”
• 22:43: Danny & Joe urge the community to solve user problems, not just build tech
• 28:59: Discussion of Vitalik’s deliberately hands-off, philosophical leadership
• 31:26: Lubin: “Ethereum would not have been successful if it had a different kind of leader.”
• 33:58: SBet, treasury strategies, macro context — Lubin’s strategic vision
• 37:44: Will SBet hit $1bn+ ETH? “I hope so. I hope much more than that, actually.” — Lubin

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Concluding Takeaways

• Ethereum’s focus has shifted from merely building decentralized protocol infrastructure to direct institutional engagement and solving real-world problems.
• Decentralization isn’t just a philosophical stance; it's now a key value proposition for risk-averse banks and finance.
• Regulatory battles have forged a stronger, more determined community—motivating assertive, offensive strategies to secure Ethereum’s future.
• Leadership within Ethereum resists command-and-control; this has led to resilience, but also required the ecosystem itself to step up.
• Ethereum’s institutional strategy mirrors Bitcoin’s playbook, but leverages its broader programmability, staking yields, and developer community.

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For anyone following Ethereum’s journey into mainstream finance, this episode is a wealth of context and first-hand insight into the narrative and strategic battles shaping tomorrow’s DeFi landscape.

Transcript

[Host (likely David Hoffman)]

Foreign.

[Ad Read / Sponsor Announcer]

From Etherealize and Joseph Lubin from Consensys, who also recently has joined Sharply Gaming to take ETH into a Treasury vehicle on Wall Street. Both of these individuals are doing their own strategy to bring ETH into the light in Wall Street. Danny Ryan and Etherealize are consulting. They are advising Wall street companies, working with Wall street companies to teach them how to work on Ethereum, how to use Ethereum and leverage Ethereum's utility to further their businesses, and also preach about Ether the asset and how it belongs in Wall Street. And Joseph Lubin is doing the same thing with a different strategy with a different direction, just doing it himself by putting eth on the sharplink gaming balance sheet, just like MicroStrategy is doing with Bitcoin. This conversation was recorded recently at a permissionless panel that I moderated and so we are giving it to you here straight on the Bankless podcast fee because I felt like it was a pretty good conversation. It's a modern take the most one of the most modern takes about the strategy that each of these in two individuals are using to bring ETH into the mainstream and some of the narratives that they use to do so. So let's go here and from Danny and Joe right now here on the podcast in the Wild west of Defi, stability and innovation are everything. Which is why you should check out FRAX Finance, the protocol revolutionizing Stablecoins, Defi and Rolex. The core of FRAX finance is Frax USD, which is backed by BlackRock's institutional Biddle. Frax designed Frax USD for best in class yields across Defi t bills and carry trade returns all in one. Just head to frax.com then stake it to earn some of the best yields in Defi. Want even more? Bridge your Frax USD over to the fractal layer 2 for the same yield plus fractal points and explore fractals diverse layer 2 ecosystem with protocols like Curve Convex and more. All rewarding early adopters. Frax isn't just a protocol, it's a digital nation powered by the FXS token and governed by its global community. Acquire FXS through frax.com or your Go to Dex Stake it and help shape Frax Nation's future. Ready to join the forefront of DeFi? Visit frax.com now to start earning with Frax USD and staked Frax USD and for Bankless listeners you can use frax.comrbankless when bridging to Fraxel for exclusive Fraxel perks and boosted rewards. Uniswap is your gateway to a more efficient Defi experience with Uniswap. Swapping and bridging across 13 chains is simple, fast and cost effective, helping you move validity value wherever, whenever. Thanks to deep liquidity on the Uniswap protocol, you'll enjoy minimal price impact on every trade. And now Uniswap V4 takes it even further. Swappers benefit from gas savings on multi hop swaps and ETH trading pairs, while liquidity providers can create new pools at 99% lower costs. The best part? You don't have to do anything extra. Each trade is automatically routed through Uniswap X, V2, V3 and V4, so you get the most efficient swap without even thinking about it. Whether you're swapping, sending on, ramping off, ramping or bridging. Uniswap's web app and wallet gives you the tools to unlock Defi's full potential on Ethereum, Base, Arbitrum, Unichain and more. Use Uniswap's web app and wallet for a more efficient way to use Defi Good morning everyone.

[Host (likely David Hoffman)]

Last day of Permissionless I just heard that everyone here owns eth, which is just a great foundation. We have two people here who have more or less seen it all. Danny Ryan helped ship the merge and really put a lot of the weight of Ethereum on his shoulders in doing so. Took a sabbatical right after that and then came back into the conversation. So I'm looking forward to pick his brain about what that phase was like. And also Joseph Lubin, founder of Consensus and has also just been through the thick of it, the ups and the downs and then the ups again with Ethereum and now is launching has launched SBet, the Ethereum version of Microstrategy. So we're going to get some pretty interesting perspectives to talk about where Ethereum currently is, it's ark on its own journey and where it's going to go next. Danny, I'll start with you. Like I said, put the weight of Ethereum on your shoulders, help ship the merge. Thank you for that. Well done. And then took a break and then came back. So with that break, that truncated experience that you had with Ethereum and then when you came back, what was kind of like your first impressions about the state of Ethereum, the state of operations around Ethereum and its overall direction because you were able to come back with a refreshed perspective. So what was some of the first thoughts that you had?

[Danny Ryan]

I guess first of all, the context of the break is maybe relevant I left for a concerted three months last year and I stepped away on Friday and on Sunday the SEC served me. And so I spent a lot of my break dealing with the government. The government at the time.

[Host (likely David Hoffman)]

What was the motivation for the serve?

[Danny Ryan]

Very unclear, some sort of investigation around the things that I've worked on, building open source protocols. But that ended up getting dropped. The political tides changed. The EF went through some growth, growing pains, some shift in leadership. And so a lot, like a lot of things happened in that, that time between me taking some time off mid last year and today. And I think it was really the way I think about it is I entered at the EF beginning of 2018. I had been trying to find my entry into the Ethereum ecosystem for about a year and a half at that point. I am Yaguchi also became the executive director of the foundation at roughly the same time during that phase of really 2018, until some point last year, it was all about the maturation of the protocol, but more importantly the decentralization. And what I mean more than just the word decentralization is the resilience of that protocol and the entire ecosystem around it. And I do think that we achieved that. We achieved an incredibly resilient ecosystem from the protocol itself. The dozens of teams working on the protocol, the hundreds of companies, thousands, tens of thousands of individuals collaborating on this thing, nobody owns it, nobody can turn it off, et cetera, et cetera. And I think we achieved that. At the same time. The world grew up around us, right? There's sharks at every layer, fierce competition and rapidly evolving regulatory regime. A world where people are hungry to adopt these systems, but there's a ton to do to kind of learn about the trade offs of these systems. And so I think the Ethereum ecosystem at that juncture of about mid last year, as the regulatory regime is beginning to change, as we're coming up for air with this incredibly resilient technology, the shift was into focus, right? Okay, we have a resilient thing, especially from the protocol layer. How do we refine it, how do we kick it over the edge and how do we actually get the world to adopt this thing? From my perspective, like, and most of the banks and institutions that I talk to, Ethereum is by and large miles ahead in terms of the metrics that people really care about. But it's not, you know, it's not just, it doesn't just happen by default that people adopt the right thing, that people adopt the most secure thing, that people adopt the most resilient thing. So a shift in leadership of the es, a shift in tone and all core devs in terms of prioritization and shipping and a shift in the, in the layers of the ecosystem from there, you know, me joining up with that and starting at the air allies and focusing onboarding the world, you know, the eth, treasury vehicles, all like, it's all kind of coming together. And it does seem like across the board the Ethereum ecosystem, which is an incredibly resilient machine, is focused heavily on delivering.

[Joseph Lubin]

Just to answer your question about the subpoena, feels like we're on a totally different timeline now. That's crazy and thank God for that. But it seemed that Chair Gensler was given a mandate, probably by Elizabeth Warren, to kill slow or co opt the Ethereum technology and is specifically more focused on Ethereum because Ethereum represented rigorous decentralization and real disintermediation. And the banking industry prefers to win a rigged game government, especially the progressive wing of the Democratic party, they prefer big government and granular control of everything. And so Ker Gensler took his mandate very seriously. And we were tracking the situation carefully for a number of years, mostly because they were asking us to produce an enormous number of documents and just scrutinizing everything that we were doing. And it appears that they had decided to secretly reclassify Ether as a security where they had proclaimed that it was a commodity in the past and the CFTC kept saying that it was a commodity. And so with the secret reclassification they were a trying to pin it on essentially people who were responsible for the merge. So they're trying to pin it on us as promoters and EIP writers and builders of the merge. And obviously Danny turned Ether from a mined commodity into a proof of stake security by, by, by his actions. And so we ended up deciding to pull the trigger. We were trying to hold back, we thought the ETFs were coming and there'd be momentum, we didn't want to harm that. But when we saw that a bunch of researchers were getting subpoenas, that's when we decided to sue the sec.

[Host (likely David Hoffman)]

I don't know if this conversation has ever been, at least to my knowledge been made public before. Like obviously Joe, we knew that you were going on the offensive with the sec, but I didn't actually know that it was downstream of people high up in the Ethereum foundation, the highest up people in the United States that the SEC could access were actually getting subpoenas. And that's what convinced you at consensus to like oh no, we can't Just like passively play nice here. We need to go on the offensive to defend people like Danny to be able to ship open source code. Is this, is that, that's what the calculus was, is like, oh, we actually need to protect people like Danny.

[Joseph Lubin]

We actually reached out to some people. I don't know if we reached out to you and we asked if, if we could share names, but, but people weren't really comfortable indicating that they'd received subpoenas. But thank you for, for sharing that.

[Host (likely David Hoffman)]

So go a little bit more because like one of the sources, the identified sources of Ethereum's malaise, which I think, you know, we could talk for hours about the potential sources of Ethereum's malaise over the last few years. You're saying like one of the sources was like, actually this. We all know that the, the rampant nature of Gary Gensler and the sec. That's not an unfamiliar conversation to anyone here. But I think what might be new is like the level of concertedness that the SEC pointed its ire towards Ethereum. How specific towards Ethereum do you think the SEC was? Or do you think it was more about crypto broadly and just Ethereum happened to represent a large share of that?

[Joseph Lubin]

Well, Ethereum is by far the biggest blockchain ecosystem on the planet and it's, it's the most threatening. So if you can think of Bitcoin as an uncorrelated digital asset, and I'm actually a little concerned that too much Bitcoin will be placed in custodians and ETFs and bitcoin treasury companies, and effectively the decentralization of that protocol will be materially harmed. If Bitcoin has to be in a custodian in order to participate in Bitcoin defi. That's a big problem to me. Projects that are not very decentralized that look more like companies than decentralized protocol ecosystems. I think the US Government probably feels fairly comfortable that, that they know where these people are and they can put pressure on them if, if they feel the need. Ethereum is in a class by itself, so it is pretty massive ecosystem, very global, rigorously decentralized, needs to continue to get increasingly progressively decentralized, needs to be vigilant about decentralization. But Ethereum is an existential threat to the current system of the world and it needs to help the current system of the world transform itself and, and serve people, companies and communities better.

[Danny Ryan]

Yeah, I think certainly in that era, Ethereum was probably the biggest, know the biggest fish they go After. But I think that was like the highest value thing behind the scenes that they were working on from their perspective. But at the, at the same time, the things that we've been building towards for a decade in terms of decentralization and resilience, like, it's not, we didn't build these things to ensure the SEC didn't have a good case, but because we focused on decentralization and resilience, the SEC didn't have a good case. You know, like, it is hard to attack, it is hard to point and say this person or this entity is actually in control of this thing. It looks like, you know, classic security or something like that. And that's because it is in fact decentralized and resilient, you know, so I, they didn't bring the case because of the, the shift in regulatory regime, but I don't think they would have won the case. I don't think they had any of that.

[Host (likely David Hoffman)]

Anyway, I think we're, you're both alluding to this. The thing that I think a lot of the people on Ethereum think is special about Ethereum. Danny, you called Ethereum the most threatening. Or maybe that was Joe or maybe that was both of you honestly about just maybe perhaps to the current status quo. Joe talked about like, well, there's a lot of Bitcoin in ETFs right now. There's a lot of Bitcoin inside of a publicly traded company called MicroStrategy. And I remember, I'm forgetting the, the guest on Bankless, but he's a kind of an old tradfi guy who calls this like Bitcoin jazz hands. Whereas like really the sharpness around Bitco has really been neutered when it's wrapped up inside of the nation state. And what you're, what I'm hearing you talk about, Danny, is like, oh yeah, the decentralization, the permissionlessness of Ethereum keeps it outside of the reins of control of the big bankers, the funders of Elizabeth Warren. And that is the thing that is threatening to them. And so, Danny, this is also the same notion that you are taking to Wall street with your work at Etherealize. So maybe you can bridge that gap for us.

[Danny Ryan]

Okay, so it's a, it's a bit paradoxical. I think there's a certain portion of like the powers that be that want business as usual, want control and in the way that they expect and have in the past. But at the same time, I'm a Tradfi guy now. I go and talk, I talk to Banks and you look like, yeah, and I actually had a meeting with the sec. It was a surreal to go from that to the other side. But anyway, so I talked to these guys and the ones actually large portions of these institutions, they're like, no, no, no, I get it, I get decentralization, we get, they use the word credible neutrality, we get impeccable uptime, we get that nobody can turn it off because surprising. You know, believe it or not, their, their lens to the world is, is counterparty risk and the reduction or elimination of it. And a decentralized and resilient platform represents that. And so when, when these institutions that are actually thinking about their business case, they're actually thinking about utilizing this technology, which they went from being terrified to utilize it to eager to utilize it over the past 12 months. You know, they, they actually all of a sudden care about Ethereum's values, care about the things that we've been ensuring exists for the past decade because they don't want, they don't want, they don't want a counterparty.

[Host (likely David Hoffman)]

So I'm happy to talk about all the things that I think Ethereum is special about. I think it's one of the big things that draws so many people into the space that no other ecosystem can really recreate in the way that Ethereum has had. Like the multi client architecture is possible to recreate actually technically on that one, but no one seemed to have really done it.

[Joseph Lubin]

Specification.

[Host (likely David Hoffman)]

Yeah, specification I think is also a very, maybe we could talk about that. But I also do want to keep on this notion of the criticisms of the ARC of Ethereum to make sure that you know, the Ethereum ecosystem doesn't say complacent. And so Danny, I want to resume a conversation that we were having earlier where you came back into the Ethereum ecosystem and I'm assuming you had some takes about how Ethereum needs to operate itself, some changes in organizational structure or just topologically at the Ethereum Foundation. And then since, since coming back, those some changes have happened. We've had two new co EDS at the EF with Tomash and Shaoway. There has been some sort of like restructuring of talent at the Ethereum foundation, amongst other things going on. So if you had like a wish list of things that you wanted to have happen in the Ethereum ecosystem globally, how well have we done what you've hoped that we would have done and like what is missing as well?

[Danny Ryan]

Yeah, I, we've built something incredible but adoption actually changing the world, we don't get that for Free. And I think we have to ident realize that, identify that and focus and focus that like this is the critical juncture of the world. Either onboards onto a decentralized permissionless stratum for the foundation of the next generation of kind of the Internet in our lives or we don't right. And it's ours to lose. And so I've seen especially over the past six months everyone identifying that, realizing it, saying it out loud and, and focusing and you see this I think of the Ethereum foundation shifting gears. Tomash, I mean shallow way as a has been deeply rooted in, in kind of the, the Ethereum Foundation. Ethereum's values and, and kind of can, can hold the line there. Whereas Tomash is, Tomash is a force right? He's built very successful company. He is you know shift shifting in a high gear at all points and is an incredible leader to kind of layer into and bring a renewed energy to the EF moving into into all core devs. I think there's a deep shift into, into focus. For many years we had focus on you know, existential focus on we need to ship the merge. We need to shift out of this proof of work environment and a proof of stake. Then there's been a couple of years of it's you know, many different things that were set aside during that era had to kind of do patch and address and, and, and, and everything. But at this point you know we're, we're shifted shifted gears into let's focus, let's focus on scale, let's focus on. On UX and as you move into outer layers the, the rest of the ecosystem is getting into focus. So I think that there's been a tone shift, a perspective shift and we're ready to meet the world as it is.

[Joseph Lubin]

So if Ethereum from day one has been building for the future we use different narratives. They all amount to roughly the same thing. It's the Internet of value World Computer Web 3 the re Decentralization of the web. It's about building this massive decentralized protocol ecosystem to enable all the things on the Internet and all the things on the web to migrate over over time and be built differently and better. And so we've been heads down for nearly 10 years building layer after enabling layer. We started out, you know, this ship. I don't think we turned the ship around. I think we've been going in the same direction for a long time. We had one engine and one propeller. We needed more power so we added a whole bunch more engines and More propellers at layer two that required a little bit of adjustment while the ship was moving forward. And so we're really at our broadband moment and we've been a awakened I think and re energized. We're seeing Bitcoin and Michael Saylor really land their value proposition in mainstream culture. They've done a great job. We saw Solana figure out a strategy and be very aggressive in trying to become relevant and successful. And we're seeing other layer ones still trying to find product market fit. But Ethereum kind of knows what it is. It's the next generation World Wide Web. It's the substrate for the next generation more decentralized economy. And we are now horizontally and vertically scalable and we can increase that infinitely over time. We are affordable. Block space is cheap, we're usable. User interfaces are pretty good now. They're going to be amazing when they are aided by AIs so that you can type into your user interface or your wallet some sort of intent and have a solver network solve that for you or satisfy that request for you. In the United States it's now legal to be a blockchain company where it secretly was illegal for quite a while and companies like ours spent just a giant amount of money fighting the government. So we, we are about to see what, what we need are users and we need applications to pull in users and so we need companies and, and major financial institutions are all just chomping at the bit to get involved. They're figuring out how to put tokens on, on their balance sheets. They are figuring out how to issue tokens, issue stable coins. They're figuring out how to use defi. So these are some, you know, real world assets. These are some early use cases. But we also need builders, entrepreneurs coming from the traditional economy or from web2 to start building of buy in for the community because that's what Web3 Primitives enable you to do rather than building in an adversarial relationship with your user as, as the traditional economy often does and as Web2 has been doing.

[Danny Ryan]

Thing I want to say is definitely the Ethereum Ethereum ecosystem is very good at building infrastructure like very good at building core protocol, very good at building L2s, very good at building advanced cryptographic techniques to control and operate and exist in these environments. But what we really need to do today as the regulatory specter has been lifted and the world is actually clamoring to use these things is we need to solve problems. We need to, we need to see what are the problems in Existing finance. What are the problems with the Internet today? What are the problems? You know what, how can we make users lives better and actually build, you know, the products and the protocols on top of this infrastructure for the world? And I think that's, that's going to be the make or break for Ethereum today is we've built incredible infrastructure. We have incredible infrastructure and we need to be solving real problems with it.

[Joseph Lubin]

We need to be solving problems and we need to be talking to our users, whether they're enterprises or just consumers. I feel like Ethereum is similar to Google with respect to Google's AI developments and practice. For years it was just so far ahead of everybody. It had the best and the brightest researchers. It sat on the technology. It didn't want to cannibalize its business, it didn't want to take the risks of being sued because it had a lot to lose. Along comes OpenAI and they don't have anything to lose and they, they grab a few researchers, they build something remarkable. They don't care that, that this hallucinating AI is, is advising people to, to leave their wives and things like that. They, they, they are disruptors and they did a brilliant job. That woke Google up just like Solana and Bitcoin woke up Ethereum. And Google is now putting out the best technology in my opinion on AI. They got their shit together. Ethereum got it shit together. The Ethereum foundation is firing on all cylinders now and there's just organic excitement returned to the, to the ecosystem.

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[Host (likely David Hoffman)]

I want to take this opportunity to talk about something that I don't think is frequently discussed when it comes to Ethereum, Ethereum's operational leadership. And it's because I think a lot of people respect Vitalik Uterine to the highest degree. Probably one of the most beloved people in the crypto ecosystem, which is a hard, hard title to access.

[Danny Ryan]

Sorry, also the most hated also.

[Host (likely David Hoffman)]

Yeah, well, most perhaps by some bitcoiners, but I'm not going to validate that opinion.

[Joseph Lubin]

Yeah.

[Host (likely David Hoffman)]

And you know, Vitalik, you know, co founder of Ethereum and also has the leadership seat of the Ethereum Foundation. There's three but I think Vitalik really kind of commands the, what the Ethereum foundation truly does and really in decentralized ecosystems nonetheless like culture is really set from the top. And in some, in 2021 about, you know, give or take maybe 2022, something in the crypto ecosystem kind of flipped from being like research oriented to it was time to become product oriented. And as Danny said, Ethereum really likes to ship infrastructure. And I think in a moment where Ethereum really needed to focus and which, which is now what we are doing in 2024 and 2025, I think the, the juxtaposition between what Ethereum needed the most and, and what Vitalik Buterin likes to do was symbolized when he wrote these like six blog posts called Possible futures of the of Ethereum and then he talked about six different possible outcomes for Ethereum. Where in my mind in that moment of time Ethereum needed a leader to say this is the future that we are going to, of the six, here's the one that we are going to do and we are going to straight shot for that. And now I don't want to, you know, speak badly about Vitalik. He is the reason why crypto has so much of the ethos that it has today. And I think we owe him just lifetimes of debt for how he has stewarded not just Ethereum, but crypto in general. And also to some degree he has passed on the leadership to people like Tomash and Xiaowei. But nonetheless he still occupies the top seat and also loves to not actually take direct control over the reign. So he's in the leadership position without being taking on like an operational excellence role inside of the Ethereum ecosystem. And to my, in my mind that's one of the reasons why it has taken so long to turn this big ship around. Danny, that's my take. I'm wondering if I can get your reflections or thoughts or anything you'd like to add.

[Danny Ryan]

Yeah, so I I1 Vitalik's personality is such that, you know, owning, controlling, manipulating from a high level this thing is not what he wants to do. But from a strategic standpoint I think he recognized early on that that's not how you build towards a resilient infrastructure, a resilient ecosystem. And so he's very purposefully not controlled this thing. And only over the years does he chime in with philosophy, potential, direction and only very rarely does he say this is definitely what should happen. He still has certainly like very high level of kind of respect in that when he does utilize that component of his voice it is listened to but that's just not what we're going to get out of Vitalik and that's not honestly what we need from Vitalik. And one of I joined up with Vivek earlier this year to co found Etherealize and one of the things that I wanted to do is just to show that the Ethereum foundation only does so much. They have boundaries as to what they operate in, what types of things they're going to engage in. And then there's this whole ring of activity that we all should be doing, we all should be accomplishing, you know, whether that's through companies, foundations, grants, etc. And you know, so one of the things that we want to do in Ethereal is operate in part of this ring where otherwise it was just kind of a vacuum, like yes, let's go show up and onboard Wall Street. Yes, let's go talk to the government, you know, because Vitalik's not going to do that. That's not what, that's not, that's not what very early on he decided was the ethos of the sphere of, of control the foundation should have. And because of that I think we have a much more resilient thing. But because of that we also have, I think we had this window of time where there's, there ends up being, you know, the sphere of activity the Ethereum ecosystem should be engaged in and accomplishing in. But is kind of this chilling effect because Vitalik does exist, because the Ethereum foundation does exist, there's this whole host of activity where it's like, well, somebody else will probably do it. It's like, no, we, we need to step in and make sure this stuff happens. So I, I don't think I have anything bad to say about Vitalik. I've known him personally for many years. I think he's like literally brilliant and has the strongest moral compass of maybe anyone I've ever met. And we just need to realize the type of person that he is in relation to this and there's a limit to it.

[Joseph Lubin]

Yeah. So I think the Ethereum foundation has been appropriate for the different phases of development of the ecosystem since the start. There are certainly some peccadillos that you could point at some periods where things didn't move quite as aggressively or as quickly as we would all like to see. But it's pretty hard to take millennia of top down command and control and build an architecture to change the way trust works in the system. Vitalik has been the right kind of leader since the start. He, you know, tremendous integrity. He set the tone for the Ethereum foundation and kind of defined the ethos of the Ethereum ecosystem by example. He doesn't lead by command and control. He leads by example and making suggestions and influencing people based on merits.

[Host (likely David Hoffman)]

He.

[Joseph Lubin]

Ethereum would not have been successful if it had a different kind of leader. Ethereum would not have been successful if it was a company that took venture capital money. Vitalik was rust into a position where there was just way too much responsibility on the shoulders of a, of a very young individual. And, and he responded unbelievably well. So we would, we would not be here if we had different kind of leadership. And we should note that maybe a year ago Vitalik and Ayako and people in the EF started to recognize that maybe some things did have to change and maybe they took too long to make those changes. But I think the changes that, that they made internally and the Organic shifts that we've seen in the ecosystem have put us on course. Back on course.

[Host (likely David Hoffman)]

Both of you guys have your own individual efforts taking Ethereum to Wall street, taking it to Tradfi. Danny with ethereal eyes and just actually straight up talking to them. And Joe, with strategic, your strategic bet on Ethereum, Aspet had a pretty like, rocky, volatile start out of the gate. And then that was meant with a bunch of vitriol on Twitter from people who I think are really aligned with anti. The anti Ethereum crowd. Maybe Joe, you can kind of comment on just like the recent history of. Yeah, which one? Yeah, maybe just comment on just like the recent history of sbet and then any plans to be buying more eth. Yeah, so specifically how much?

[Joseph Lubin]

A very large amount. So putting it into a sort of big picture, we're essentially at the end of a super cycle, an 80 year debt and generational super cycle. The US government is paying about 25% of its budget in interest expenses, more than military expenses. Other countries are in worse shape. The Trump administration came in and recognized that we needed to reformat certain systems in the world, reformat trade relationships, reformat military relationships. The legislators in the US just decided that austerity was un American and so we can't really reduce expenses in government easily. Scott Besant took that cue and decided that, hey, we're just going to grow our way out of this mess. And what that means to me is that legislators are going to enact laws that enable our industry to have certainty and to flourish. And their government and major corporations are going to be the wind in our sails as, as our ecosystem comes into mainstream relevance. What we've seen. So that's a sort of backdrop. Michael Saylor did something really brilliant because he recognized that, hey, the value of the US dollar and Treasuries are going to harm his business and make it harder for them to be profitable and to survive, really. And so he needed to find a better capital asset for his balance sheet. Eventually he settled on Bitcoin and he's done some, some really brilliant things. Others are following in Bitcoin, in Solana, in Ether and Ethereum. And what is going on right now, in my opinion, is that the US needs to maintain primacy. It needs the US dollar to maintain primacy, but it also needs to weaken the US dollar in order to keep the US dollar strong in a political sense. Stablecoins present a tremendous answer. So we can US dollarize the entire world pretty inexpensively. The US can replace its lenders with, with our ecosystem essentially providers of stablecoins and all of that is going to be built on top of a new kind of high powered money. So the US is going to have less trust and less political power in the world in terms of the monetary regime. But what I believe we're seeing is a massive race to accumulate high powered money. And the highest powered money right now is ether and Bitcoin because they're permissionless and uncensorable. So we are doing our part and we're going to continually raise money and accumulate ether. We're already fully staked, we're going to do some restaking and some defi. And we're going to enable people, consumers and institutions to access the best professional asset managers in the Ethereum ecosystem that we're working with to grow their exposure to ether even more than they can be exposed to it by holding ether alone.

[Host (likely David Hoffman)]

That's all the time that we have. But I want to ask Joe one very last quick question right now. To my understanding, SBET has half a billion dollars worth of ether in its treasury. Will it have over $1 billion by the end of the year?

[Joseph Lubin]

I hope so. I hope much more than that, actually.

[Host (likely David Hoffman)]

Joe, Danny, thank you guys for joining me on stage today.

[Danny Ryan]

Appreciate it.