Crypto Assets' "Nvidia"

Ethereum is the "Nvidia" of Crypto Assets, it is the biggest winner in the first phase of construction and a must-have asset.

Written by: Stephen McBride

Translation: Vernacular Blockchain

Bitcoin (BTC) is a once-in-a-lifetime asset. Since 2009, its price has surged by 40 billion times, turning a small investment of $100 into $4 billion. I know many early adopters of Bitcoin who have changed their lives because of it. Some smaller crypto assets are also following in Bitcoin's footsteps. With the easing of regulatory environments, more crypto assets will see growth.

However, despite the rapid growth of the crypto assets market, its scale remains very small. The market capitalization of just one company, Microsoft (MSFT), exceeds the total value of Bitcoin and all other crypto assets combined! Why is this the case? Until recently, the crypto assets market was primarily dominated by individual investors, with large institutions on Wall Street barely involved. Even when Wall Street occasionally invests in crypto assets, they almost exclusively buy Bitcoin. This is also a significant reason why Bitcoin accounts for nearly two-thirds of the entire crypto assets market.

But this era is coming to an end. Wall Street's funds are beginning to flow into smaller Crypto Assets. This provides us with opportunities, and here is how we can profit from it...

Wall Street was "substantially banned" from investing in small crypto assets

I use the term "substantive" because there is no explicit law prohibiting investment in small crypto assets, but the previous government exerted immense pressure on crypto assets innovators and investors. Crypto assets banks were shut down by the government, founders and funds were prosecuted and "de-banked", and protocols were under continuous scrutiny. As a result, innovation stagnated and capital dried up. Who would be willing to take the risk of going to prison and having their lives destroyed?

But now the situation is changing. The U.S. House of Representatives has just concluded "Crypto Assets Week," during which lawmakers voted on three new crypto assets bills:

• The GENIUS Act will provide the first true stablecoin framework for the United States.
• The Anti-CBDC Surveillance State Act will prohibit Washington from creating government-controlled stablecoins.
• The CLARITY Act will address the most challenging regulatory issue in crypto assets: the classification of tokens.

In short, these bills legalize Crypto Assets. The House has passed all three bills, and Trump has signed the GENIUS Act into law. Meanwhile, the anti-CBDC and CLARITY bills are being submitted to the Senate. This is a significant victory for Crypto Assets.

These three bills are part of a broader effort to legalize Crypto Assets. Regulatory clarity is key to unlocking trillions of dollars from Wall Street and will spark a wave of innovation in Crypto Assets.

The ultimate goal of Wall Street is...

Tokenization. The true disruptive power of blockchain lies in its elimination of intermediaries, achieving a bankerless financial system. We have already seen this in the "killer use case" of Crypto Assets — stablecoins. They are the only way to send $10,000 to friends around the world in seconds for less than a penny via mobile. All this is possible because they bypass intermediaries like Western Union, PayPal, and banks.

The adoption rate of stablecoins is rising rapidly. The total value of stablecoins in circulation has reached 250 billion USD, surpassing the physical currency amounts of the Canadian dollar or the pound. Stablecoins are the tokenization of the US dollar. Next, all real-world assets such as stocks, bonds, real estate, barrels of oil, and artworks will be put on the blockchain. The total value of global real-world assets is estimated to exceed 250 trillion USD, which is the market potential we are discussing.

Wall Street is at the forefront of tokenization. The world's largest asset management company, BlackRock (, recently launched a tokenized treasury bond fund. Another Wall Street giant, Franklin Templeton ), has also performed similar operations on its money market fund. Robinhood has begun offering tokenized shares of private startups like OpenAI and SpaceX to users in Europe. JPMorgan, UBS Group, Visa, Bank of New York Mellon, PayPal... almost no Wall Street firm is not migrating to blockchain. Even city-states are getting involved, such as Dubai recently tokenizing an entire building.

The current financial infrastructure has remained unchanged for decades, yet it processes trillions of dollars in transactions every day. Imagine the boost that Crypto Assets will receive when these huge sums of money start flowing on the blockchain, and how much companies like BlackRock will save by eliminating intermediaries.

The best way to profit in the first phase of Tokenization is...

Invest in high-quality crypto asset businesses that build new financial system pipelines. Think about the best ways to make money during the AI boom of the past three years: buying infrastructure providers like Nvidia(NVDA). The same goes for the crypto asset space.

Most tokenized assets—from stocks to tokenized government bonds to stablecoins—run on Ethereum (ETH). BlackRock, Robinhood, Visa, PayPal, Stripe, and JPMorgan are all building on Ethereum. Ethereum is quickly becoming the settlement layer for a new financial system based on blockchain. As more assets go on-chain, Ethereum will earn more fees, thereby driving up its price.

I like to think of Ethereum as the "Nvidia" of crypto assets; it is the biggest winner in the first phase of construction and a must-have asset. But it won't be the only winner. There is a class of emerging, smaller, faster, and more specialized protocols designed specifically for tokenization. Some focus on tokenizing government bonds, some are designed for tokenizing real-world assets like real estate, and some are redefining collateralization. These projects are currently quite small, equivalent to "nano-cap" companies in the stock market. But as Wall Street money pours in, these platforms are expected to outperform other major crypto assets.