Why Ethereum Is Becoming the World’s Economic Settlement Layer - Andrew Keys

Added: 2026-06-01

[00:00:00]And I've heard a a few people in the space saying that Ethereum is the chosen network because it never had the downtime. It's got the history, and even though Solana might be faster and maybe it it's got to maybe some other things to say some say it's not as decentralized. It's obviously been downtime that Ethereum now has been chosen. Um first of all, is that true in your mind from everyone that you're talking to in the institutions? And then I actually want to talk a little bit about, you know, your main competitors.

[00:00:28]Sure.

[00:00:29]So So I think that there is no debate and there is empirical data that shows high-quality liquid assets, which is what I think is important. If you're talking about a global settlement layer, like I don't care much about meme coins or or swords of a video game or, you know, what I think that I'm interested in and I think what Ethereum serves for is a global settlement layer to the economy of the world. And right now it's still very early days, but Ethereum has basically 90% market share as that settlement layer. Okay. And and and I think so so so there's no debate there.

[00:01:17]Uh Okay. Let's talk about the competition because it's it's very unique and I'm curious how you feel about competition and if you think more is coming.

[00:01:26]We've got Bitwise Immersion, which is the getting more famous every day, Tom Lee, who's been an analyst for a long time, was bullish on Ethereum for a long time.

[00:01:36]Saw him on CNBC, bullish on stocks, bullish on crypto, and then all of a sudden he's the chairman of Bitwise Immersion. They have, I think, about $5 billion of ETH, about 1 and 1/2%, I think he's going for 5%. That's been the one that's I've been talked about and I guess that's liquid. There's Sharplink, which is Joe Lubin of ConsenSys in the past, who I think has about 3.3 billion of ETH. And then there's you. One of the big things about you, Andrew, is I think you put in about 650 million of your own supply of ETH, which gives you a ton of cred of the ETH machine. Then there's EasyZilla, and I think it kind of drops off from there. Have I got that about right? And And how do you look at those competitors? Are they different? Do they help you ultimately?

[00:02:20]>> Yes. Peter Thiel took a half a million dollars and turned it into a billion dollars using the exact same techniques [music] we're using inside the investment club. He met a CEO, his name was Zuckerberg. He pitched him the deal, and he said, "Okay, I'll give you a half a million dollars." Mark went public and sold the shares to people like you.

[00:02:35]>> [music] >> Well, what happened to Peter? Well, he exited and got a 2,300 X return. The wealthy invest in early-stage companies, folks. The public markets are for suckers. It's a rigged game. By the way, this happens in crypto as well. [music] It's called pre-sale tokens. This is Solana. Does anybody know this chain?

[00:02:52]They sold pre-sale tokens for 4 cents.

[00:02:55]And you can see the date on there, April 5th, 2018. Look at Solana today, folks.

[00:03:00]That thing's up over 1,000 X. The media and Wall Street and all these hype people get you to buy the top.

[00:03:07]Meanwhile, they put their clients in at the bottom, and they use you for liquidity to make their clients rich.

[00:03:14]You can play this same game. You just have to have the financial education and the deal flow. That's it. Great question. You know, first and foremost, I have a ton of respect for Tom and Joe in what they're doing.

[00:03:27]And I think you did point out something right in the sense that that that I've put more skin in the game, materially more than than anybody in all treasury space.

[00:03:41]And that brings me to kind of a bit of a differentiation.

[00:03:47]Broadly speaking, a bit minor and and Sbet are reverse takeovers of shell companies.

[00:03:57]And what we've done is we've done a de novo entity. And and I'll just speak kind of broadly speaking about this. So, I wanted to contribute some of my own capital uh because I didn't want to recommend something to anybody else that I wouldn't do myself. And I thought that was important to me to basically lead by example and and and say that this is something that I am patient zero. I am a shareholder as well and everyone was investing pro rata with me.

[00:04:30]And uh when I looked broadly speaking at the two paths, one or let's call it three paths. One is to do an IPO and and and and and I didn't think that that made sense, you know, it would take a year plus to uh you know, create an S-1 and and and go through like the full capital markets process.

[00:04:50]Um so, then there were kind of two paths. One was to do a reverse takeover or or the other was to do a SPAC.

[00:04:59]And I had a few conversations with uh some reverse takeover targets. And so, basically, broadly speaking, anybody who wants to sell me their publicly traded business on the Nasdaq is doing that because their business is failing.

[00:05:18]And within a failing business, there are lots of contingent liabilities.

[00:05:27]I'll give you a few examples. One uh was was a biotech company where the drug didn't make it through clinical trials and and basically was going out of business. And and due to how the SEC works, you can't have uh just a rapid removal of a CEO because there are what are called change of control provisions.

[00:05:49]So basically, I would have if I went down the path of this particular reverse takeover, uh I would have had to pay a CEO who wanted $5 million a year to stay on the board.

[00:06:03]You know, that his company is bankrupt, basically.

[00:06:07]Um and the guy didn't know how to spell Ethereum.

[00:06:10]And I didn't want that ongoing liability.

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