Ethereum Pitched as Wall Street’s Blockchain of Choice

Every day, trillions of dollars move through Wall Street’s outdated financial infrastructure. Mortgage and bond trades can take days to settle, intermediaries add costs and risks, and capital often remains tied up in the process. For the world’s largest banks and asset managers, relying on the wrong settlement rails could lock in inefficiency for decades to come. Blockchain technology offers a potential solution, but the debate centers on which network can handle the weight of global finance.

Ethereum vs. the Rivals

Ethereum has long faced criticism over congestion and high transaction costs, while competitors advertise faster throughput and lower fees. Some fintech giants are even developing proprietary blockchains to bypass existing networks. Yet Danny Ryan — cofounder and president of Etherealize, and one of the architects behind Ethereum’s historic “Merge” to proof-of-stake — argues that Ethereum’s combination of security, neutrality, and privacy makes it uniquely qualified to underpin the next generation of financial infrastructure.

From the Ethereum Foundation to Wall Street

Ryan spent nearly a decade at the Ethereum Foundation, working alongside Vitalik Buterin and guiding the protocol through some of its most pivotal upgrades. With Etherealize now supported by $40 million from Paradigm, Electric Capital, and an early grant from the Ethereum Foundation, he believes Ethereum is ready to take on Wall Street-scale adoption. His case is rooted not in hype but in what he sees as hard technical and economic realities.

Security as the Defining Factor

Asked why Wall Street should trust Ethereum given its well-known scalability challenges, Ryan pointed to the strength of its security. “Crypto-economic security is a scarce resource,” he explained. In proof-of-stake systems, validators stake capital to make attacks prohibitively expensive. Ethereum now has more than one million validators and nearly $100 billion locked, a level of decentralized security that newer networks cannot replicate quickly.

By contrast, faster blockchains often depend on a limited number of institutional backers. Ryan described these models as closer to private consortiums, relying on contracts and legal frameworks rather than decentralized economic guarantees. “That’s not the same as securing a neutral, global network with tens of billions at stake,” he said.

Ethereum’s Dominance in Tokenized Assets

Research from Etherealize supports Ryan’s position, showing that Ethereum secures more than 70% of all stablecoin value and 85% of tokenized real-world assets. For Ryan, the scale of this security footprint underscores why Ethereum may be the safest bet for Wall Street’s long-overdue modernization.