Ethereum is like Amazon in the 1990s 21Shares
“Just as Amazon evolved beyond books to redefine entire industries, Ethereum may also surprise us with revolutionary use cases that we can’t fully envision today,” one 21Shares executive said.
Wall Street investors are still largely unaware of Ethereum’s potential, akin to Amazon in the early nineties before it became a $2 trillion tech giant, according to a research analyst at crypto asset manager 21Shares.
Spot Ether ETH$2,474.51 exchange-traded funds launched in July but have seen relatively small inflows compared to spot Bitcoin BTC$69,168 ETFs.
Leena ElDeeb, Research Analyst at 21Shares, tells Cointelegraph that large inflows into ETH ETFs will only happen once Ethereum’s potential is understood, For more updates at Serialeturcesti.
Ethereum is “complex, akin to Amazon in the 1990s — promising vast potential but less straightforward in its use cases,” Eldeeb said.
While Amazon started as an online bookstore, “few could have predicted that it would transform into a global e-commerce and cloud computing giant, reshaping how we shop and use digital services,” Federico Brokate, vice president and head of the US business unit at 21Shares added.
Similarly, Ethereum began as a platform supporting basic smart contracts and now supports over $140 billion worth of decentralized finance applications since launching in 2015.
“Just as Amazon evolved beyond books to redefine entire industries, Ethereum may also surprise us with revolutionary use cases that we can’t fully envision today.”
While Ethereum’s $320 billion market cap is only 6.25% of Amazon’s $2 trillion valuation, Brokate notes one advantage Ethereum had over Amazon in the 1990s is the vast pool of talent working to make the network useful.
“By the end of the 1990s, Amazon employed around 7,600 people. In contrast, the Ethereum network today features over 200,000 active developers — including software engineers, researchers, and protocol designers — all contributing to its evolution,” said Brokate, adding:
“Amazon has grown to employ over 1.5 million people worldwide — growth we may see paralleled in the Ethereum ecosystem.”
While Ethereum has been challenged by Solana and other layer-1 competitors, it still dominates in the world of decentralized exchanges, borrowing and lending, stablecoin and real-world asset markets.
BlackRock, the world’s largest asset management firm, has tokenized over $533 million worth of money market funds on Ethereum. Recently, the Union Bank of Switzerland rolled out a tokenized fund of its own on Nov. 1.
