Now that Ethereum has celebrated its 10th anniversary, there are things that once again make us realize. The network that has grown multiple times over these 10 years is actually still just beginning.

The numbers make it clear. Over the past decade, Ethereum's market capitalization has expanded by 3,600 times, making it one of the top 30 assets in the world. Compared to NVIDIA's 150-fold and Bitcoin's 300-fold growth, Ethereum far surpasses them. Its current circulating market value exceeds $28 billion. However, the truly interesting part starts from here.

Even if Ethereum's TVL increases by 100 times, it still accounts for only about 2% of the total global financial assets. Even if the user base grows by 100 times to reach 1 billion people, VISA and Mastercard each issue over 3 billion cards. In other words, Ethereum still has room for 100 times growth.

The trustworthiness as a financial system has already been established. Over the past 10 years, the mainnet has never experienced a shutdown or crash. The annual transaction volume of stablecoins alone has reached $20 trillion, with over 70% occurring on Ethereum. A layered financial ecosystem has been built, including DeFi, NFTs, lending protocols, and derivatives markets.

It is also important to note that tokenization of US Treasuries and stocks has just begun. Just as stablecoins grew from $1 million in 2016 to $100 billion in 2021—a 1,000-fold increase in two years and a 100-fold increase in four years—tokenization of US dollar assets could follow a similar trajectory. With $40 trillion in US dollars, $36 trillion in US Treasuries, and $60 trillion in US stocks, if their tokenization accelerates, explosive growth could occur within a few years.

Ethereum's strength lies not just in being a currency system but in functioning as a supercomputer shared by all humanity. It allows anyone to deploy programs without permission, accessible to everyone. This is similar to the relationship between email and postal mail. Once, postal mail was the main means of communication worldwide, but now the number of messages processed daily by email exceeds what postal mail handles in a year. The same could happen in finance.

We should not overlook its role as an alternative system capable of responding to global financial crises and regulatory evasion needs. Of the 195 countries worldwide, about 10 are excluded from mainstream financial systems, and 30 to 50 are marginalized. For people and businesses in these regions, Ethereum offers a new option. It has advantages over SWIFT in terms of network neutrality, 24/7 availability, transaction speed, transparency, and automatic settlement.

Comparing with competitors is also interesting. Solana has experienced over 10 major outages in five years, with an average of 1 to 3 network reboots per year. Sui has had two outages in two years. Meanwhile, Ethereum's mainnet has gone ten years without experiencing a single major failure.

There is also potential for Ethereum to surpass Bitcoin. Its current inflation rate is between -0.2% and 0.5%, lower than Bitcoin's 1.7%, gold's 1.5%, the euro's 2.5%, and the US dollar's 3.3%. From a scarcity perspective, Ethereum could hold equal or greater value than Bitcoin. Since August 2015 to January 2016, when it was below $0.30, it has already risen over 13,000 times to its current price.

Cathy Wood points out that by 2032, Ethereum could reach $166,000, with a market cap of $20 trillion. Compared to the current circulating market value of $28 billion, there is nearly 50 times room for growth. The launch of US Ethereum spot ETFs and staking features adds new growth engines. Participants in staking can earn an additional annual yield of about 3%.

Just as the AI industry cannot exist without NVIDIA, and the mobile phone industry cannot exist without Apple, the cryptocurrency industry would lose its purpose without Ethereum. Over the past decade, three groundbreaking products—stablecoins, DeFi, and NFTs—have emerged, and the next decade is expected to bring further innovation.

When Apple Mac users surpassed 10 million in 1987, that was not the end but the beginning. Currently, Ethereum has about 10 million monthly users. As we officially enter the next decade, the potential for Ethereum to grow many times over is not at all low. In fact, it might just be the true beginning.