It’s truly an interesting story to reconsider that Ether still has the potential to grow 100 times over the next 10 years.

Ethereum officially celebrated its 10th anniversary this month. Growth over these 10 years has been truly extraordinary: its market capitalization expanded by 3,600 times, and it is now among the world’s top 30 asset classes. The current price is $2.34K, and its market cap is about 282.5 trillion yen. Considering that NVIDIA grew 150 times and Bitcoin grew 300 times, you can see just how incredible Ether’s growth has been.

What really matters is that Ethereum is no longer just a speculative asset—it has become a real financial infrastructure that actually works. Stablecoins alone have an annual trading volume of $28 trillion, and over 70% of that activity happens on Ethereum. DeFi, NFT, staking, lending, derivatives… all these kinds of financial activities are carried out on Ethereum. And the mainnet has gone 10 years without experiencing a single outage or downtime. This is, in fact, strong evidence of remarkable reliability.

Looking at the next 10 years, even if Ethereum’s TVL (Total Value Locked) or user base were to grow 100 times, it would still be less than 2% of the total global financial assets. Even if the user base reaches 1 billion, Visa and Mastercard each issue more than 3 billion cards. In other words, there is still plenty of room to grow.

Tokenization of U.S. Treasuries and U.S. stocks has also only just begun. Given the trajectory of stablecoins growing from $1 million in 2016 to $100 billion in 2021, it’s entirely possible that the same could happen with the tokenization of U.S. dollar assets. Demand in emerging markets is also increasing rapidly.

The reason Ether will become important in the future financial system is that it can play the role of an “alternative system” capable of meeting demand during financial crises and when regulations are being evaded. Now that it has become a value network second only to SWIFT—operating 24/7, offering transparency, and enabling cross-border transaction speeds—these points significantly surpass SWIFT. Some even point out that it could replace SWIFT in 30 years.

The possibility of Ether surpassing Bitcoin is also by no means unthinkable. Ether is not just a currency—it’s a financial system, an internet system, and a supercomputer shared by all of humanity. Its inflation rate is lower than BTC’s, and new growth engines like ETFs and staking have emerged. Cathie Wood has pointed out that Ether could reach $166k by 2032, and the view among entrepreneurs and analysts that Ether will surpass Bitcoin remains strong.

As the core driver of innovation in the crypto industry, it is also expected that Ether will lead the next breakthrough after DeFi and NFT. Competitive advantages such as security, decentralized governance, and a strong community culture should continue to support its growth going forward.

So, Ether’s next 10 years are likely to be less about just price increases—and more about the potential to redefine the global financial system itself.