Joseph Lubin, founder of ConsenSys and co-creator of Ethereum, predicts that Wall Street’s large-scale adoption of Ethereum will drive Ether to surge 100x and ultimately surpass Bitcoin as the leading “monetary base.”
In a post on X on Saturday, Lubin argued that financial institutions will inevitably stake Ether, since they currently bear significant infrastructure costs that Ethereum could replace by unifying today’s fragmented systems.
He believes this shift will spark massive demand for Ether, fueling a dramatic rise from current levels.
“ETH will likely 100x from here. Probably much more.”
He emphasized that traditional financial institutions will need to evolve into TradFi firms built on decentralized rails—engaging in staking, running validators, operating layer-2 networks, participating in DeFi, and developing smart contracts for agreements, processes, and financial instruments.
Just last week, VanEck CEO Jan van Eck described Ether as “the Wall Street token,” warning that banks must embrace the Ethereum network to power stablecoin transfers or risk falling behind.
Ether Still Faces a Long Road to Surpass Bitcoin
Lubin also said he is “100% aligned” with Fundstrat Global Advisors’ Tom Lee, who argued in August that Wall Street’s adoption of Ethereum would eventually allow ETH to overtake Bitcoin in network value. “Yes, Ethereum/ETH will flip the Bitcoin/BTC monetary base,” Lubin asserted.
Still, Ether remains only about one-fourth the size of Bitcoin by market capitalization, underscoring the long path ahead. However, its market dominance has doubled since April and now stands at 14.3%, according to TradingView.
Ether as the “Highest-Octane” Decentralized Trust Asset
Lubin, who also serves as chair of Sharplink Gaming, the world’s second-largest Ethereum treasury company, insisted that Lee’s outlook is still too conservative.
“No one can yet comprehend how vast and fast a rigorously decentralized economy—powered by hybrid human-machine intelligence and built on Ethereum Trustware—can truly grow,” he said, calling Ether the “highest-octane decentralized trust commodity.”
“Trust is a new kind of virtual commodity. And ETH, the highest octane decentralized trust commodity, will eventually flippen all the other commodities on the planet.”
“Joseph Lubin’s forecast that Ethereum could overtake Bitcoin’s monetary base is striking a chord with institutional investors, who are increasingly allocating treasury assets to ETH for its staking yields and central role in tokenization ecosystems,” said Nassar Achkar, chief strategy officer at crypto exchange CoinW.
While Bitcoin continues to dominate as a store of value, Achkar noted that “Ethereum’s programmability, combined with Wall Street’s embrace of staking and DeFi rails, could accelerate the ‘flippening’—positioning ETH as both a yield-generating asset and the foundational layer of global financial infrastructure.”
Stablecoins on Ethereum Hit Record Highs
At the same time, Ethereum’s stablecoin supply has surged past $160 billion, setting a new all-time high and more than doubling since January 2024, according to Token Terminal data published Saturday.
“Stablecoin demand on Ethereum appears to be growing exponentially,” Tom Lee said the following day.
Ether gained over the weekend, approaching the $4,500 level but failed to break resistance there, returning below $4,400 during early trading on Monday morning.
