Until now, there are still people saying that Ethereum is a dead project. But when you look at the numbers, you realize how outdated that thinking is.

Ethereum celebrated its 10th anniversary this month. Its growth over the past decade has been truly extraordinary. A 3,600-fold increase in market capitalization, now reaching around $280 billion. Compared to NVIDIA’s 150-fold and Bitcoin’s 300-fold growth, its expansion is overwhelming. It’s the only digital asset to join the top 30 assets in the world within just 10 years.

What’s most astonishing is the size of the actual value circulating on this platform. Just stablecoins alone have an annual trading volume of $20 trillion. DeFi protocols lock in hundreds of billions of dollars in funds. NFT markets are entering maturity, and tokenization of US dollars, US Treasuries, and stocks has already begun. And the mainnet has operated for 10 years without any downtime or hacking incidents. That’s truly rare.

I often get asked, “What will happen in the next 10 years?” Personally, I believe Ethereum still has 100x growth potential. The reason is simple.

First, the scale issue. Even if TVL (Total Value Locked) increases by 100 times, it would still only represent about 2% of the world’s $400 trillion in financial assets. The current user base is around 10 million per month, but even if it reaches 1 billion users, it won’t surpass the 3 billion+ cards issued by Visa and Mastercard. In other words, we are still in the very early stages.

Looking at the growth trajectory of stablecoins makes this potential even clearer. $1 million in 2016, $1B in 2018, $100 billion in 2021. Growth of 1,000 times in two years, and 100 times in four years. The same pattern could very well occur with US Treasury and stock tokenization.

Another important point is that Ethereum functions as an “alternative option” to respond to financial system crises. Economic crises, pandemics, wars, political instability, currency devaluations. Over the past 100 years, the world has experienced 10 major financial crises and over 30 sovereign defaults. About 10 countries have already been excluded from mainstream financial systems, and 30 to 50 countries are marginalized. Ethereum offers a new financial option for these people.

In terms of security and reliability, Ethereum stands apart. Ten years of uninterrupted operation. Meanwhile, Solana has experienced over 10 major outages in 5 years, requiring network reboots 1 to 3 times a year. Ultimately, competition comes down to “who makes fewer mistakes,” and in this regard, Ethereum is overwhelmingly ahead.

I also personally believe there’s potential for Ethereum to surpass Bitcoin. Ethereum is not just a currency system; it’s a financial system, an internet system, a supercomputer shared by all humanity. Its inflation rate is currently between -0.2% and 0.5%, lower than Bitcoin’s 1.7%, gold’s 1.5%, and the US dollar’s 3.3%. Kathy Wood points out that it could reach $166,000 by 2032, which would be nearly 50 times its current price.

By mid-2017, Ethereum’s market cap approached 80% of Bitcoin’s. Now it’s around 20%, but that might be a temporary state.

Ethereum also has the potential to become a value network surpassing SWIFT. Its network neutrality, 24/7 availability, low fees, transparency, and automatic asset settlement far exceed SWIFT. While SWIFT sanctions about 20 countries, Ethereum is permissionless. Any country or individual can transact.

The AI industry cannot exist without Nvidia. The mobile phone industry cannot exist without Apple. Similarly, the cryptocurrency industry would lose its purpose without Ethereum. During the DeFi summer, Ethereum’s market share was 95-99%, and during the NFT boom, over 90%. It remains the core of almost all major blockchain applications.

In addition to the Ethereum spot ETF, staking support is scheduled to start this October. An additional annual yield of about 3% is expected, which could become the third growth engine.

Ultimately, I believe the probability of Ethereum’s success is very high. Mainstream financial systems won’t suddenly collapse, but partial collapses will continue to happen. And each of these collapses will create new market opportunities for Ethereum. It’s not dead; perhaps the real beginning is just ahead.