Why Wall Street is Building on Ethereum RIGHT NOW! with Vivek Raman

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, folks.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
We're recording at Chainlink's smart Con event, and joining me
is vivek Ramon, who is the co founder and CEO
of Etherealized. VIVEC.

Speaker 1 (00:13):
Great to have you, Thanks so much for having me.
Good to see you.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
Yeah, Vivic, tell us a bit about yourself and what
is etheroralized.

Speaker 3 (00:20):
So I'm not a crypto person. I'm actually a Wall
Street person, which is finally in vogue now. I spent
eleven years on Wall Street at the traditional finance banks
Morgan Stanley, UBS, Stochebank, No Mira from twenty twenty nine
to twenty twenty and I traded a bunch of credit
products which are we're the backbone of the US economy.

(00:40):
But their technology, their operations, their settlement was the most
stone age type technology I've ever seen, and so I
did it for eleven years, built up an amazing network,
love everyone on Wall Street, but nothing ever changed in
tech land.

Speaker 1 (00:54):
So I left Wall Street, which.

Speaker 3 (00:56):
People don't do that often, and shared found Ethereum and
I was like, this thing is It's the platform where
Wall Street should tokenize and trade their assets. So I've
been working on that for five years independently. For a
long time, I knocking on a lot of doors, getting
a lot of rejections last year when the regulatory wind shifted,
when the ethtfs were approved, when Larry Fink started saying
the whole world's gonna be tokenized, I was like, now

(01:17):
it's time to actually mobilized and institutionalized. So sure I
set up Etherealized, backed by the Ethereum Foundation and Metallic
with support from the etherorem ecosystem overall to build the
institutional arm for.

Speaker 1 (01:27):
The Etherem ecosystem. And that's that's what Etherialized is today.

Speaker 2 (01:30):
That's incredible. And to your point, Etheroreum has become this
layer that all of Wall Street and all the tradifi
forms want to build on. I mean Black Rock launched
Biddle on their first Exactly what is it like looking
back again you're a Wall Street guy and seeing all
these institutions and firms coming in.

Speaker 3 (01:49):
It's it's almost like sigh over relief because I felt
like I was wrong for so long. I was like,
I was like, I swear that I see blockchain as
a solution to Wall Streets. Just technology and operational issues
and everything wants to upgrade for the technology era. But
the financial sector hadn't, so I was like, am I crazy?
And after some time when you saw the regulatory hostility,
I was like, will I ever be able to build

(02:12):
in the US with a financial platform? And so seeing
that it's finally not only vindicated, but like now all
trientify firms are they have a blockchain mandate, they actually
have to integrate blockchains. Just it's good to see that
we will be able to realize the potential of blockchains
becoming the hub for all financial activity as well as
much more than that. But to start getting the financial

(02:32):
sector financial sector on board is a is a really
really good upgrade to the whole system and a really
cool use case to show.

Speaker 2 (02:38):
It feels like the markets, the economies, and possibly parts
of the government will all run on blockchain rails eventually.
It seems that's the direction that Puck is heading in.

Speaker 3 (02:47):
I think that the ironic part is when blockchains are
that backbone that you said for governments and for the
financial sector and for social media and for everything, no
one's going to know they're using a blockchain, so etherea
is going to be invisible, but it'll be everywhere, kind
of like the Internet, Like no one thinks about the Internet,
but it's everywhere. But now we have the Internet for money,
and it's safe and it's secure, and it's reliable, and

(03:09):
it's global and it's not owned by anyone. And that's
why like Ethereum is such a standout platform to win
this blockchain race.

Speaker 1 (03:16):
Chikin's one digital gold.

Speaker 3 (03:18):
Ethereum I think is gonna win the platform for everything,
and I want to make sure that happens because that
is the ultimate potential of blockchains. So yeah, we're here
to advance Etheroereum responsibly and get to show real use cases.

Speaker 2 (03:30):
So walk us through what's the mission of etherorialized and
how can folks leverage the platform and so forth.

Speaker 3 (03:36):
So Etheroralized started off educating institutions about all the things
they can do with blockchains, and that includes tokenization. That
includes building their own custom blockchains, which are layer twos
on Ethereum, and that includes using applications, building applications, decentralized finance,
I like to call it decentralized finance, programmatic finance programming,
or assets actually unlock automation. We started educating about all

(03:59):
of that across the board to the byside of Wall Street,
to the cell side of Wall Street, to asset managers,
to investment advisors and taught about everything very quickly. We
realize that everyone wants to deploy something in Ethereum, but
no one has the expertise to do it.

Speaker 1 (04:15):
So we built up.

Speaker 3 (04:15):
An engineering arm. So we started building the solutions. So
we're building ways. We're building ways to tokenize assets, We're
building ways to build different layer twos. We're building infrastructure
like privacy, so tokenized assets can actually be compliant trade privately.
So we're building a lot of tools, and the idea
is to onboard as many assets, as many institutions, and
as many new players into the Etherorem ecosystem.

Speaker 2 (04:36):
So we've seen Etherorem's ecosystem blossom and grows significantly. And
you have a lot of layer two so are you
also working with the layer twos?

Speaker 1 (04:44):
Absolutely?

Speaker 3 (04:44):
I think the layer twos are such an important part
of Etherem's ecosystem. I think any blockchain system that thinks
that the whole financial sector will live on one layer
is it's a little naive in my view. I think
every firm wants their own customized blockchain, they want their
own block space, they want some privacy, some public. They
want some compliance integrations into some parts of the chain.

(05:07):
That is only possible with a modular architecture, and that's
where the layer twos come in. The layer twos can
be faster, they can be cheaper, they can have different
security assumptions, they can have different Wallstreet players on them,
they can onboard the world that way.

Speaker 1 (05:21):
So I think the layer twos, I see a.

Speaker 3 (05:23):
World We're gonna have a blossoming amount of layer twos
all plugging into this liquidity hub that's Ethereum Layer one.

Speaker 1 (05:29):
So do you see a future.

Speaker 2 (05:30):
And I'll give the example of Sony because they built Sonyum.
I believe a layer that many brands and companies this
is kind of the model build our own blockchain using
the security layer of the Ethereum Layer one and getting
the smart contract benefits and all that jazz.

Speaker 3 (05:46):
It's almost like saying companies build on the Internet, but
they build their own companies, Like they're not building new
internets every time, but they build their companies on top
of the Internet. So companies want to maximize profits, and
companies want to have their own ecosystem and have their
own customer retention. I always say, like Ethereum isn't a
it's not a charity. It's the best place to do business.
If a company wants to deplub blocking strategy, you do

(06:07):
it on Ethereum. You build your own layer two, You
have your own customer attention, you have your new revenue sources,
you have a new innovation. Coinbase did it with Base,
Robinhood's doing it with their chain, and yeah, Sonium, like
people outside of finance, there's a lot of potential outside
of finance too. Sonium world Chain is doing this with
their own ecosystem. There's so many and we're at the
we're at the very start of the adoption curve, so

(06:29):
there's gonna be a lot more.

Speaker 2 (06:30):
It's amazing and I can't wait for the Clarity Act
to pass, where there's going to be more clarity where
these companies can now don't have to look over your shoulder,
there's no ambiguity. They can just hit the ground, put
their head down and start working. Are you expecting like
even more innovation and incredible stuff coming out after that?

Speaker 1 (06:53):
Oh?

Speaker 3 (06:53):
I think the Genius Act the stable Coin Bill was
the prelude, but look at what happened. The stable Coin
Bill is now in law and every single bank, every
single finteche everyone's launching their own stable. So see what
happens with a little bit of regulatory clarity. When the
Clarity Act ultimately passes, it's gonna unleash I think ten
x the innovation because that applies to defied, applies to
other retailgnized assets, it applies to frameworks for all different

(07:17):
kinds of blockschain architectures.

Speaker 1 (07:18):
That's going to unlock some real upsides.

Speaker 3 (07:20):
So I mean, I got the opportunity earlier this year
to testify in front of Congress about the Clarity Acts,
so we're familiar with it. We're very supportive, and it's
a matter of when, not if. But when blockschain's got
codified in the law, then we'll see the real the
real potential. The bull market hasn't even started yet. This
this many little like up and down and aneath is nothing.

(07:40):
I think the real thing is going to happen when
we have regulatory clarity. Every company is deploying and then
you have ethereum the networks to be pervasive and the
assets gonna be worth trillions.

Speaker 1 (07:50):
And that's what I'm excited for.

Speaker 2 (07:51):
It's amazing. I can't wait to see what innovation comes
out after this bill passes. Absolutely talk to us about
etherialize and how you're working with institutions. I don't know
if you can name drop, but you know, like give
us some mock scenario of maybe someone who came to
you and say, hey, we want to do this and
how you're helping them.

Speaker 3 (08:08):
Unfortunately, can't name drop, but that's a that's a good
thing out of that thing, right. But we like to
say the worthy ambassadors to Ethereum because there's a lot
of things that you can do. So some institutions want
to tokenize assets perfect, we'll either help do it for them,
We'll point them at partners. Some institutions want to create
their own Layer twos. Again, we'll do it for them.
We'll point into partners. Some want to deploy on Layer twos.

(08:30):
Some want to just learn about the space. Someonet to
learn about what DeFi is. Some want to design privacy architecture.
We want to be the one stop shop for institutional
adoption for Ethereum. So sure it's not Ethereum isn't one
size fits all.

Speaker 1 (08:42):
That's a good thing. That's why I have the Layer
two roadmap.

Speaker 3 (08:45):
We're here to be a funnel and sort of guide
people and navigate people through the potential what this platform
can do.

Speaker 2 (08:51):
Have you had anybody approach you, I mean, maybe too
early for this, because there's still we need the Cloudy Act.
I want to launch my own token, rewards token to
build my brand and customer retention and stuff like that.

Speaker 3 (09:03):
Absolutely, and we do need the Clarity Act to make
it like very low risk. All this should be codified.
Love this is such a positive something. When I was testifying,
I told I mean both sides of Congress or the
Republicans Democrats, and I was like, this is the most
non partisan technology ever. This makes Democrats should love this
because it democratizes literally access to finance. Republicans should love

(09:24):
this because it increases profit margins and creates business opportunity.
I don't see a more positive some technology out there.
Maybe AI, but even AI, like I think blockchains are
more positive some than AI is.

Speaker 1 (09:35):
So so yeah, people are waiting on.

Speaker 3 (09:38):
Clarity, but yes, absolutely rewards tokens, like everything outside of
finance is also fair game. And that's that's where it's
gonna be excited to see the innovation that happens on Etherium.

Speaker 2 (09:46):
Oh for sure. So what's on your role map, what
can we expect in twenty twenty six and things.

Speaker 3 (09:50):
Like that, lots more tokenized assets, lots more intitutional layer
twos and new novel applications, and real progress on zero
knowledge proof technology and architecture and privacy.

Speaker 2 (10:04):
Let's double click on the zero knowledge proof aspect, because
privacy is very important to a lot of these institutions.
How are you finding that balance with connecting to a
or building on a public blockchain, connecting to other public
blockchains and having privacy.

Speaker 1 (10:21):
I think it's stable stakes.

Speaker 3 (10:22):
I think that the space hasn't worked yet, and that's
why we've seen so many iterations over the last ten
years of privately held blockchains, company blockchains, consortium chains. The
reason it hasn't opened up, and that's the reason we
haven't seen blockchain blossom, is it hasn't happened on public networks.
So you do need public networks, but on those public
networks you need the ability to have selective privacy and

(10:44):
programmable privacy, and we're getting there luckily.

Speaker 1 (10:47):
Ethereums. Not luckily, it's by design.

Speaker 3 (10:49):
Etherem's architecture has invested in zero knowledge proof technology very
heavily for our last five plus years across the Layer
one and a lot of the Layer twos. So we
have the tools in place to eat the privacy that's needed,
and so we're gonna help build it. We're gonna help
push the ball forward and create the privacy tools that
will allow for actual mass adoption.

Speaker 1 (11:08):
And we're close. So, oh, for sure.

Speaker 2 (11:10):
A dumb question, and this is a very new question.

Speaker 1 (11:13):
No such thing.

Speaker 2 (11:14):
There are a lot of institutions building on Etherorem. Is
there a cap as to how many layer twos can
be on Etherorem? Does that slow to network down at
some point let's say a million layer twos? Right? And
this may be true early to answer to this question,
but what are your thoughts around that?

Speaker 3 (11:28):
No, I think that the layer two designs pretty brilliant
because layer twos themselves and customize their fees. They can
customize how many times they post data to Layer one
for security for example, everything can be toggled and customizable.
That being said, Ethereum is continually increasing its capacity to
have more and more Layer twos in anticipation of a

(11:49):
world where we have millions of layer twos. So right now,
if there are a million layer twos, fees would probably
be a lot higher on Layer one. Sure there's an
upgrade happening in a month, and there's more upgrades happening
after where the capacity to have Layer twos while also
maintaining security and decentralization on Ethereum is maintained perfectly. And
that's that's what we're excited for. So I do see

(12:10):
a world of thousands or more of Layer twos and
ethereymobile to handle.

Speaker 2 (12:14):
That so exciting, Man Revec. We're going to have to
do an in person and go more deeper into this,
but thank you so much for joining.

Speaker 1 (12:21):
Me, Thanks for having me. It was fun.

Speaker 2 (12:23):
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