“Spot Ethereum ETF could easily push ETH’s price north of $5000”

I think that's a
reasonable expectation, Which means multiple
billions of dollars. It's important to put in
context that we've been Spoiled by the spot. Bitcoin ETFs. We're like ten, $13
billion, whatever. That's easy actually. Before those ETF
launched the fastest Growing ETF of all time
ever in the US in 30 Years of ETFs gathered
$5 billion in its first Year. The Bitcoin ETFs
have just spoiled us to Get used to these
absolutely massive Numbers. So even if
Ethereum ETFs gather 2 or 3 or $4 billion in their
first year, they will be Historical successes
from the perspective of The ETF industry. Massive wins. And I think that's what
we'll see. I do think these inflows
set the stage for Ethereum to trade to a
new all time high. I think it could easily
push east price north of $5,000. If it's as
successful as I suspect It will be. The reason
for that is you have to Remember that Ethereum
has effectively no net New issuance, right? When you look at the
amount of Ethereum being Issued and then subtract
the burn from use, even At these relatively low
levels of use in the Ethereum ecosystem right
now, we're more or less Flat, which means that
this demand shock is Coming into the market
and there's no native Supply to soak it up. The launch of a Spot
Ethereum ETF may be an Even bigger game changer
than its Bitcoin

Counterpart, some
analysts say. I think last week was
probably the most Important week in
crypto. In the last, you know,
ten years. Ethereum ETFs approved. We now have Aetherium
ETFs. It's here. It's happened. We've gotten Ethereum
ETF approved by the SEC. Another crazy victory for
crypto. The SEC approved
applications for the Listing of spot Ethereum
funds. Whether the ether ETF is
good for Bitcoin or not, What. Impact could this ETF
have on the price of Ethereum and on the
broader cryptocurrency Market? And most
importantly, should we Expect more crypto ETFs
coming soon? And if so, which ones? We answer these
questions. In our latest Interview with Matthew
Hogan, the CIO of Bitwise, one of the
firms that applied for Their own spot ETH ETF. What do you think is the
significance of the Approval of a spot ETF? If we compare it to the
approval of a Bitcoin of A spot Bitcoin ETF? The Bitcoin ETFs were by
far and away the most Successful ETF launch of
all time. They pulled in about $13
billion of assets. They've contributed to a
rising price of Bitcoin. They've sort of changed
the landscape of what Crypto is in America. The ETFs aren't going to
be as big. Ethereum is, of course a
much smaller asset than

Bitcoin. Um, and a
little bit more complex To understand. But I
still think they're going To be extremely
important. I think these ETFs,
assuming they launch, uh, Could easily pull in
more than $5 billion in Their first year on the
market. I think that Would reshape the
Ethereum market. I think it would
contribute to Ethereum Moving to new all time
highs. And I also think the
added regulatory clarity We get from having spot
Ethereum ETFs in the Market will help
Ethereum continue to Develop as an important
new platform for DeFi, For NFTs, for
stablecoins and other Assets. So this would be
a game changer. It would move us into a
new era of Ethereum, and I think the ETFs
themselves would be very Successful if they in
fact launch. There is still one last
step that needs to be Taken, which is the
approval of these S-1 Forms, which probably
would require some time Before they get, uh,
approved. So, uh, in order for our
audience to understand How tough is this latest
step, uh, is there a Chance that, uh, we are
not going to get through It? And, uh, how long
this whole thing might Take? Yeah. Great question. Uh, you know, we don't
have our own internal Forecasts, but
Bloomberg's ETF analysts Have assigned a 99%
probability that these Funds will launch. So some of the experts
in the world are very Confident that we'll get
through this other

Process. And we should. The difference between
what the SEC approved the First time, 19 B4's and
what it's looking at now With the S1's is the
night before is sort of a Merit based document. Is the market mature
enough to support ETFs And they can decide yes
or no. The S-1 is a disclosure
based document. Can you adequately
describe the risks of Investing in Ethereum
through an ETF so that Someone can, you know,
appropriately understand Those things? That's not
a sort of yes no Question. It's more of
an iterative process Where you go back and
forth with the SEC to Make sure they're
comfortable and you're Comfortable with
describing those risks. So, you know, most
experts think we should Get to launch as far as
timing, historically, When you look at this
S-1 back and forth Process, it takes
anywhere from a few weeks To a few months. The spot Bitcoin ETF, uh,
was one of the most Successful ETFs, uh, if
not the most successful ETF in history. Maybe something
different is going to Happen with Ethereum. As you also mentioned,
the future Ethereum ETF, Uh, was not very
successful. It wasn't met By a lot of demand. I also saw that you
posted a poll on on Twitter on X, where you
are essentially assessing The interests that would
actually that, uh, Product, the spot ETF is
going to have among Institutional investors.

And a slight majority of
the respondents to that Poll said that they
would all just the, uh Bitcoin the spot Bitcoin
ETF. So don't you see the
risk that this product is Not going to get a lot
of traction? Yeah, I think you make
great points. The example of the
Ethereum futures ETFs, Which were really a dud,
they didn't attract much Interest uh, at all is a
good cautionary tale. Uh, and as you
mentioned, that Twitter Poll shows a lot of
people are comfortable Owning just Bitcoin. Those are the reasons
why I don't think these Will be as big as the
Bitcoin ETFs. Right. Um, which today
holds something like $50 Billion in assets, I
think it will be Substantially smaller
than that. But even at a few
billion dollars, I think That these will have a
meaningful impact on the Market. And I do believe
there is that kind of Interest, because the
investors that bitwise Talks to every day, uh,
and we do 20,000 meetings A year with professional
investors, there's a Substantial number of
them that are interested In Ethereum. Now, I do think one
little nuance. You know, the Bitcoin
ETFs boomed right out of The gate. I think the
ETH ETFs could be a Slower burn. I think
there's more education Around Ethereum. How it's different from
Bitcoin, the value of Diversification, the
different use cases. Then there is around the
first ever crypto ETF. So even though I'm
optimistic that we'll get

Billion dollars of
flows, they might build Over time and not have
the same day one spike. But I do feel confident
that there is demand for This asset. The Ethereum
ecosystem is very Interesting. It's going
after different use cases Than Bitcoin. Uh, and it's an
attractive market. So ultimately I think
it'll pull in billions of Dollars. But it could
take longer than the Bitcoin ETF. We know that this spot uh
ETF do not include the, Uh, rather important
parts of the value Proposition of ETH,
which is staking this Additional value
proposition, which allow People to earn yields on
eath. So what do you think
about that? Do you think that is a
big minus for this Product? Yes. Yeah. Yeah I do um, you
know look every product Wrapper comes with its
own risks. If you hold ETH
directly, maybe through a Centralized exchange and
you stake it, you're Taking on security risk
in exchange for that Extra yield that you get
from staking it. If you hold it directly
in the self-sovereign Format and staking it,
you're taking on personal Security, hygiene risks
and other risks to do That. And it's
inconvenient. The ETF Will be assuming it
launches extremely Convenient. You'll be
able to buy it in your Brokerage account. It will be extremely low
cost, but you'll be Forfeiting this yield. Does that mean it's
right for everyone?

Absolutely not. If you're deeply crypto
native and you're Comfortable in these
other ecosystems, you Should do it yourself
because you can access That yield. But there
are many investors who Don't feel comfortable
doing it themselves. And for them, the ETF
will be a good choice. But it's absolutely
you're absolutely right. It makes the ETF less
attractive than holding ETH yourself and staking
it if you're comfortable Taking on those risks. A lot of institutions
were sort of rooting into Bitcoin for a long time. They knew what it was. They knew about the main
narrative of digital Gold, which is very
simple, very Straightforward. With
Ethereum is a little bit More complicated because
there are different sort Of competing narratives. And in the pitches that
could potentially be, uh, Proposed to the
institutional investor. So looking a bit into
the discussion that is Happening on X, uh, a
few analysts pointed out, Uh, to four main, uh,
sort of narratives, um, Embodying the value of
Ethereum, which is first Digital oil, second
internet bond, third Programmable money, and
finally, tokenization Platform. So, um, I'm
not sure whether you Think any of those
should be the predominant One or if all four could
somehow be sold to Institutional investors. Yeah. Um, that's a great
question. You know, I think I
think of those four

Programmable money
speaks the most to me. You know, I find the,
the, the best way to Describe ETH is even
though it's not a perfect Analogy to point to
something like Apple's App Store and say it's a
global, decentralized Computer that you can
build applications on top Of. And some of these
applications are real Killer apps, things like
stablecoins, things like DeFi, things like NFTs,
things like tokenization, All of those only exist
because the Ethereum Ecosystem is able to
support them. And I think that idea of
this platform, that Killer applications
exist on top of that, are Reinventing finance. I think that's the
narrative that works. I saw a. Somewhat, uh, expert,
some Ethereum fans that Were more focused on the
tokenization platform Than to the programmable
money one because of this Narrative. That is
gained quite a lot of Popularity, which is
about tokenizing Everything and having
Ethereum being the main Platform where this is
happening. Yeah, I think that's a
very valid narrative. The issue is the the
public's conception of Tokenization is really
around taking things like Funds and stocks and
having them trade on Ethereum rather than on
existing national Platforms. Um, that's
sort of the modern General consensus. And my view is that that
is many years away. If we talk about
tokenization of the idea Of taking anything and
making it liquid, taking Dollars and making it
liquid, then I think

That's a valid
narrative. But I worry That when you say
tokenization, what people Think of is BlackRock's
money market fund. And I just think that
that's a that's probably A next cycle mainstream
event. And in the meantime,
there are real killer Apps today again,
stablecoins, DeFi, NFTs, Etc. that have millions
of users today. Um, and so that's why I
sort of, I worry a little Bit about leaning too
much into tokenization, Because I think, I think
it's still, you know, Years off from a
mainstream perspective. What people are saying is
that the, um, US Financial authorities
are are kind of changing Their attitude towards
crypto. And this event is the
proof of that. Is this event such a,
um, breakthrough moment From, from the point of
view of regulation? I do think it's a
breakthrough moment. I think what happened
last week in the US, we Had we had this event
around the spot ETF. We had the US Congress
passed the first ever Piece of pro-crypto
legislation repealing an Accounting rule from the
SEC called SAB 121. We had the US House in a
bipartisan fashion, you Know, both political
parties voting to support Comprehensive crypto
legislation. That's a complete 180
from where we were even Two weeks ago when the
executive branch under President Biden was
threatening to veto the First piece of
pro-crypto legislation. All of a sudden, crypto
has become sort of the Only thing that there is
a bipartisan consensus on In America. And I really
think it is a complete

Sea change. The industry
has been marching forward With both of its hands
tied behind its back by This, uh, lack of
regulatory clarity and What has been a broad
based regulatory assault On crypto over the last
four years. Uh, and it appears that
that assault is over and We're shifting to having
a tailwind. And I really think it's
hard to overstate the Importance of this
change. I think it's I Think it's night and
day. I think it's a 180. I think it's going to
unleash the mainstream Applications of crypto. And, um, yeah, I think
last week was probably The most important week
in crypto in the last, You know, ten years, um,
maybe nine years, maybe Since the Ethereum's,
uh, launch. Yeah. And actually, I
wanted to ask you, uh, What you think about
potential new spot ETFs. Spot crypto ETFs, uh,
appearing in the future. When will Assolada spot
ETF be approved? Do you see it coming
anytime soon? Yeah. Look I think we're
going to get there. I think we're in the ETF
era of crypto. But there is a pretty
big dividing line between Bitcoin and Ethereum and
everything else, which is We had regulated futures
contracts trading on a National futures
exchange on the CME for Bitcoin and Ethereum. And that gives
regulators a lot of Confidence that the
underlying market is not Subject to market
manipulation. We don't Have that on Solana. So even if we get
comfort around its Security status, we
still have a difference

Between Bitcoin and
Ethereum. That makes it more
challenging. Ultimately, I think we're going to
get spot ETFs on a wide Array of crypto assets. I think that can happen
over the next couple of Years. But my guess is
what we're going to see First is something like
comprehensive crypto Legislation that
elevates exchanges like Coinbase to a new level
of regulatory oversight. That gives the SEC
comfort that all of these Assets that are trading
are ETF eligible. So I don't know that
we're going to continue To get this 1 or 2 ETF
approach. I think we may, you
know, work with these for A while, see some
legislative developments And then get a lot of
ETFs. But we're closer Today than we were you
know last week I do think This is an important
step. But I wouldn't I Wouldn't extend the line
to Solana too easily. There's some additional
work that has to go on Before we talk about
that. And just a. Follow up
question on that. So you said that there
is a, uh, marking line Between, uh, Bitcoin,
Ethereum and, and Everything else, but for
some reason people pick Solana up as this sort
of next one. So is that just because
Solana is, uh, uh, very Popular in token that is
being talked about a lot Lately, or is there some
sort of line separating Solana from all the rest
that comes after it? I think there are two
factors. I think one is That people like Solana
and are excited about it And think it's a
compelling investment Thesis, so it would be
nice to have an ETF on

It. And the other is
that people are pushing For regulated futures on
Solana. At least that's a that's
a that's a sort of, uh, Thought bubble out
there. But mostly I think it's
that people want it. Um, you know, it's it's
the third big asset, Right, that people talk
about when they talk About the most
interesting assets in Crypto. They go Bitcoin,
Ethereum and then Solana. So I think it's an
expression of desire Rather than reason. But look, we're going to
get there eventually. Um, an ETF would work in
Solana if it were allowed To launch. And it would
it would lower costs and Raise security. I think
we will get there. But I do think it'll
it'll take a little bit Of time. Thanks a lot for coming
on our show. It was a very insightful
conversation. This has been really fun.
Thanks for having me. And, uh, thanks for your
work in the crypto Ecosystem.