Wall Street moves past Ethereum pilots into real…

Vivek Raman, cofounder of Etherealize, says Wall Street's relationship with Ethereum has crossed a critical threshold: large financial institutions are no longer running proof-of-concept pilots but treating public blockchains as production infrastructure. "A year and a half ago it was proof-of-concept, dip your toe in," Raman told CoinDesk. "Now it's: we need to jump in head first and use public chains just like we all use the internet."

Why it matters

The shift is broader than stablecoins, which were the first institutional use case. Raman says the conversation has expanded to tokenized stocks, bonds, real estate and investment funds — all gravitating toward Ethereum because of its existing liquidity depth and network effects. "It's because Ethereum started as a hub for liquidity that now consumers are saying: let's bring other assets on," he said. Ethereum's dominance across stablecoins, institutional deployments and developer tooling has created a self-reinforcing flywheel that traditional finance is increasingly unwilling to route around.

Market impact

ETH's price has not yet reflected the institutional momentum, a disconnect Raman attributes to the long sales cycles of traditional finance rather than any weakness in the underlying thesis. "The piping is all in place. We just haven't seen all the assets come onchain yet," he said. His read is that the market will reprice ETH's role as the asset securing the network once tokenized asset migration reaches critical mass — a lag dynamic that has frustrated investors but that Raman frames as a feature of institutional timelines, not a signal of structural failure.