Key Highlights
Etherealize cofounder Vivek Raman says the attitude among major financial institutions toward Ethereum has shifted from proof-of-concept experimentation to real-world deployment.
ETH's price has not yet reflected the growing institutional momentum, which Raman attributes to the unusually long sales cycles of traditional finance and a structural lag between infrastructure being built and capital actually moving on-chain.
Raman pushed back on criticism of the Ethereum Foundation, arguing that its willingness to step back from central coordination is a feature rather than a flaw.
Vivek Raman, cofounder of Etherealize, a firm focused on bringing Ethereum to institutional finance, says the conversation inside major banks and asset managers has changed in a way that is not yet fully visible in the token's price. A year and a half ago, he said, the discussion was about proof-of-concept projects and cautious dips into public blockchain infrastructure. Today, he argues, the question is no longer whether to use public chains but how fast to scale the buildout, with institutions treating Ethereum the way they treat the internet: as shared infrastructure whose underlying mechanics they do not need to understand to depend on.
Stablecoins were the first institutional use case to gain real traction, and Raman says that early adoption created the liquidity and network effects that are now pulling other asset classes onto the chain. Tokenized treasury markets have already surpassed $14.6 billion, and institutions are now actively exploring tokenized equities, corporate bonds, fixed income products, and real estate funds. Ethereum's dominance in stablecoin settlement and institutional liquidity has made it the default layer for new tokenization projects, and each new deployment reinforces the network effect that draws the next one in.
The disconnect between Ethereum's institutional momentum and ETH's actual market performance has frustrated investors watching the adoption story develop without seeing it reflected in price. Raman attributes this gap to timing and the mechanics of how large institutions move. Sales cycles in traditional finance are measured in years, not months. The technical piping, he said, is in place. What has not happened yet is the full migration of assets on-chain, a process that will take time but that he believes will eventually force a market reevaluation of ETH's role as the asset that secures the network all of those financial activities depend on. Former BlackRock executives have made similar arguments about Ethereum's structural position in institutional finance.
Raman also addressed the scrutiny the Ethereum Foundation has faced over leadership changes and its evolving role in the ecosystem. His argument is that a network designed to serve as the substrate for the global financial system cannot have a single party controlling it, and that the foundation's move toward a lighter-touch coordination role is the correct one. He said the foundation should focus on maintaining Ethereum's core properties, security, censorship resistance, privacy and open standards, while continuing research into zero-knowledge technology and quantum resistance. The foundation's restructuring has been read by critics as a loss of direction, but Raman frames it as the natural maturation of a network that no longer needs centralized stewardship to maintain its momentum.
