Ethereum's current trading price is still far below its highs, but SharpLink CEO Joseph Chalom stated that the long-term logic for ETH is becoming stronger. Chalom previously worked at BlackRock and helped launch its tokenization fund BUIDL. In his podcast Milk Road, he mentioned that cryptocurrencies no longer require a single major catalyst to move forward.
According to Chalom, what's more important now is the speed of blockchain development on Wall Street. He also listed three numbers that need to be monitored.
Why has ETH already rebounded?
Chalom identifies three forces that affect the prospects of Ethereum:
- Emotional Improvement: This summer, there was strong criticism of the Ethereum Foundation from the outside world. Chalom said that this phase has passed, and now the network has more contributors and maintainers. The price of ETH has risen from around $1,550 in June to about $2,300 at present.
- Institutions will adopt: As banks and asset management companies migrate transactions to the blockchain, they will need ETH to secure these transactions. High-value assets require guaranteed finality, and this necessitates the use of Ethereum.
- Financial Networks: In the long run, Chalom expects Ethereum to become the core infrastructure in the financial sector, just as the Internet has become the infrastructure for information.
Ethereum is a toll road.
Chalom made an analogy. The internet is open, neutral, and difficult to censor, but it has never had tokens. In his words, Ethereum is more like a huge public highway with toll booths:
- Anyone can use it, regardless of the scale.
- The same rules apply to all users.
- Users pay a small fee to maintain road safety, upkeep, and predictability.
He recalled that BlackRock CEO Larry Fink presented a slide at Davos in January this year, describing Ethereum as a “tokenized toll road.”
Chalom indicates that the current low fees on Ethereum are due to the still ample block space. However, he predicts that this situation will change as stablecoins, tokenized assets, on-chain finance, and AI agents lead to a surge in transactions. By then, he believes that the demand for ETH as both a store of value and a secure asset will increase.
No need for a new catalyst.
Chalom says that he agrees that cryptocurrencies do not need a specific trigger point. The driving forces are already in place: stablecoins, tokenized assets, DeFi, and AI agents. The real question is how fast they will grow.
Three tests for Chalom
He suggests comparing the following three figures at the beginning and end of the year:
- Stablecoin supply: Currently, it is around $300 billion to $305 billion. When it reaches $1 trillion and then $2 trillion, that will indicate the speed at which the industry is progressing.
- Tokenized stocks: The total scale of tokenized assets is approximately $40 billion. Among this, tokenized U.S. listed stocks account for only about $4 billion, but they are growing the fastest. There is tremendous potential: the global stock market has a market value of about $150 trillion, with U.S. stocks totaling about $75 trillion, and just the top 10 companies in the U.S. alone amount to about $25 trillion.
- AI Proxy Payment: Chalom Pay attention to transactions between proxies that adhere to standards such as x402 and ERC-8004. Nowadays, most transaction amounts are less than $1. A key indicator will be when the quarterly transaction volume jumps from hundreds of millions to billions, as well as when the average transaction amount begins to rise.
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