Ethereum is trading well below its highs, but SharpLink CEO Joseph Chalom says the long-term case for ETH is getting stronger. Chalom, a former BlackRock executive who helped launch its tokenized fund BUIDL, told the Milk Road podcast that crypto no longer needs a single big catalyst to move forward.
What matters now, according to Chalom, is how quickly Wall Street moves on-chain, and he named three numbers to track it.
Why ETH Has Recovered
Chalom pointed to three forces behind Ethereum’s outlook:
- Better sentiment: There was strong criticism of the Ethereum Foundation over the summer. Chalom says that phase has passed, and the network now has more contributors and stewards. ETH has climbed from about $1,550 in June to around $2,300.
- Institutional adoption: As banks and asset managers move transactions on-chain, they will need ETH to secure them. High-value assets need guaranteed finality, and that requires ether.
- A network for finance: In the long run, Chalom expects Ethereum to become the core infrastructure for finance, much as the internet became the infrastructure for information.
Ethereum As A Toll Road
Chalom offered an analogy. The internet is open, neutral and hard to censor, but it never had a token. Ethereum, he said, is closer to a huge public highway with toll booths:
- Anyone can use it, big or small
- The same rules apply to every user
- Users pay a small fee to keep the road secure, maintained and predictable
He recalled that BlackRock CEO Larry Fink showed a slide at Davos in January saying Ethereum is “the toll road to tokenization.”
Fees on Ethereum are low today because there is still plenty of block space. Chalom expects that to change as stablecoins, tokenized assets, on-chain finance and AI agents bring a surge of transactions. When that happens, he says, demand for ETH as both a store of value and a security asset will rise.
No New Catalyst Needed
Chalom said he agrees that crypto does not need one specific trigger. The drivers are already in place: stablecoins, tokenized assets, DeFi and AI agents. The real question is how fast they grow.
Chalom’s Three Tests
He suggested comparing each of these numbers at the start and end of the year:
- Stablecoin supply: It is about $300 billion to $305 billion today. How fast it reaches $1 trillion, and then $2 trillion, will show how quickly the industry is moving.
- Tokenized stocks: Tokenized assets total about $40 billion. Tokenized US public stocks make up only about $4 billion of that but are growing fastest. The potential is huge: global stock markets are worth about $150 trillion, US stocks about $75 trillion, and the 10 largest US companies alone about $25 trillion.
- AI agent payments: Chalom is watching transactions between AI agents using standards such as x402 and ERC-8004. Most are worth less than $1 today. The key signal will be when quarterly volume moves from hundreds of millions of transactions to billions, and when the average value starts to climb.
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