Joseph Chalom: Ethereum's New Leadership Era Is Here (What Comes Next)

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The community will agree that there was a, you know, a lot of defense or a lot of kind of lack of offense one could say for a little bit of time, but it really does feel like it's coming together with these kind of new non-profit groups that that this focus. And honestly, Joe, just you, Tom, and, you know, Joe, too, um just thinking about, okay, how can we leverage what we have in terms of holdings and in terms of influence to kind of shape this network? The three of you amongst, you know, Vitalik and other core contributors, there's kind of started to become this new leadership of Ethereum. And so, the promise of Ethereum that I think will be appreciated by the market is what you said on off the top here, which

was that it's the best credible credibly neutral decentralized economic layer for the internet. It's just It's going to be appreciated for that for a myriad of reasons over the coming years. We We don't need to get into all of the what-ifs, but there's a lot of uh hypotheticals that, you know, may or will play out that will force the world into this or or or push the world further into this direction as well as just general technological improvements, AI, etc. And so, when you're thinking about this core group of leaders in this new Ethereum offensive, while also balancing this credibly neutral decentralized trustless network, those, you know, one could argue that those two are are there's a centralizing

force of leadership and a decentralizing force of the network. Those two are almost at odds. So, how do you balance that? And what is what what is the perfect balance look like for leadership while maintaining that neutrality? >> This is going to be the simplest answer, but it's a really important question. Those of us who are funding Eth Labs or Ethereum Institutional, we will not control it. So, for example, Eth Labs is going to have a completely independent rotating board, uh and Tom, myself, and Joe aren't going to be board members. Um they're going to have completely auditable uh books when it comes to financials, and most importantly, everything they build and deliver to

their road map is going to be open-sourced and available. So, if anything, instead of it being a conflict of interest, it's an alignment of interest. Ethereum Institutional is slightly different. It is a go-to-market group. It's not the core protocol. These are people who are doing education, who are doing marketing. There, Tom and I will have a role. Um why wouldn't you want to have two older TradFi people with, I don't know, 75 years of experience help you go to market? But that's very different. Um the the protocol's entirely decentralized. The Ethereum Foundation, I think, owns less than half a percent of all ETH. And none of us have any control over the Ethereum Foundation's its mandate, its road map,

nor over ETH Labs. So, I think the way I would think about it is Ethereum's going to stay completely decentralized. We are going to be people who are going to be advocating and funding the Ethereum ecosystem, but we have no control mechanism, and that is the right answer. Uh it would be a big mistake to have any one person try to call control Ethereum. Ethereum is, other than Bitcoin, the most decentralized platform. A million validators. Over a million contributors to date to the Ethereum code. Diversity of software clients. Like, the worst thing to do would be to have any individual step up and feel like they have control. We're stewards, we're advocates, we're

narrative providers, but this is completely decentralized, and the protocol runs the way it runs. So, I want If anyone's concerned about that, please don't be. Yep. Yep. Yep. I have I have two day jobs. I don't need a third. >> Do you and Tom talk often? >> Um so it's it's really funny. We actually have a very good relationship. When we started, I used a word on Bloomberg that I believe in this idea of co-opetition. That you can compete with a high-quality competitor on your merits, but at the same time you can cooperate. I think we're at the point where we're a year into this debt process for both Bitmain and Sharplink. Um we probably have 90% of our interests commonly aligned. We

want to provide an exposure vehicle for both institutional and retail investors. We want to accumulate ETH. We want to make ETH productive. We want to be benevolent capital into the ecosystem. I think we have slightly different personalities, but um we speak uh at least once a month, sometimes a couple of times. I think this idea of bringing uh more stewardship to the ecosystem, funding ETH Labs, funding Ethereum Institutional, and there'll be more announcements to come. If you've noticed, the press releases are triparty. You know, we're we're on >> the same uh letterhead and master and headlines. So, I think the the relationship's as good as it can be, and

I have tremendous respect for what Bitmain has done and for Tom himself. So, I think we have more cooperation than competition. We have a different a slightly different voice. I think Sharplink has been more institutionally oriented. We have a higher institutional ownership. Uh Tom has been a little bit more retail sentiment and owned. Um but much more in common, and I have a tremendous respect. And on these type of projects, it's pure cooperation. >> Yeah, I mean, you guys have taken off in a combined fashion. I don't know the exact figure. I'm sure, you know, you would know. It's probably what, 7% of the supply, 8%? Maybe in that range.

>> So, Bitmain and Sharplink uh are the two Ethereum digital asset treasuries that were able to raise billions and billions of dollars. Tom has done even more accumulation than Sharp Link, has a larger balance sheet. But, unlike Bitcoin where there's probably 50 to 75 Bitcoin dots around the globe, most subscale, in the Ethereum space there are only six or seven dots that launched. And Sharp Link and Bit Mining are the two largest. I think the ones with who got escape velocity, the ones who have a voice. And some of the other ones either didn't launch or or complete their SPAC mergers. And there's two that have just started selling ETH and have pivoted away from being a dot. And that's okay.

But, I think there's a couple of us who who have large holdings and and have mouthpieces. Tom is much more retail oriented and he has an incredible experience from his days of being a macro researcher.