The Bull & Bear Cases For Ethereum | Roundup

**Michael Ippolito** (0:00)
Blockworks co-founder Michael Apolito here. Quick break to talk about something we've just launched, Blockworks investor relations. As the market shifts toward institutional capital, investors want more transparency, more standardization and a higher level of professionalism. But the traditional IR model is slow, manual and not built for how crypto works. If you're building on chain, your data is already live, your business is already transparent. The challenge is turning that into a clear, credible story for investors. That's exactly what we're solving with Blockworks IR. It's a single platform that brings together real-time analytics, branded investor portals and hands-on advisory support, so you can communicate what matters. If you're an on-chain business looking to level up your investor strategy, check out Blockworks investor relations at blockworks.com/investordashrelations.
Hey, everyone. Quick disclaimer before we get into today's episode. Nothing said on Bell Curve is a recommendation to buy or sell securities or tokens. This podcast is for informational purposes only, and the views expressed by anyone on the show are solely our opinions, not financial advice. Our guests and I may hold positions in the companies, funds or projects discussed. All right, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Bell Curve. You got me, Myles, Xavier, Xavier and I are coming live from the Ethereum Canton Conference. Just kidding. ECC here in Cannes. Actually, Cannes, I will say, Cannes is absolutely beautiful. If you're going to pick a location for a conference, A plus.

**Myles** (1:28)
Is it Nice to be in Cannes?

**Michael Ippolito** (1:30)
Oh, Myles.

**Myles** (1:31)
Yeah, come on. I had to get that in.

**Michael Ippolito** (1:35)
Oh my God. You're front running your dad era of jokes. I can see you in a pair of A6 in front of a barbecue.

**Myles** (1:43)
I'm loving it.

**Michael Ippolito** (1:45)
Yeah, actually, it's really nice that it's in March. Apparently, last year, it was 100 degrees here, which this has made it quite nice. But we're actually... So to preempt the topic for this week, we're going to be talking about, controversially, the bull and bear case for Ethereum. And we're going to be talking about ETH the asset and ETH the ecosystem, or Ethereum the ecosystem, maybe separating those two things. But before we get into that, Xavier, I'm curious, what have your takeaways been from the conference so far?

**Xavier** (2:18)
Yeah, I mean, we were chatting before the show. I think it's clear that there's probably more mindshare in US right now. So we had the bass last week, of course, which we all attended, and lots of institutions and suits there, and also a lot of builders. And in Europe, like, there's probably less fresh talent, to be honest. I didn't meet many, like, 20-year-olds to 25 There's a bit more sort of mature people moving across companies, and the whole space is still more mature. ETC in the past, we were mentioning, like, Modular Summit, Celestia, had some, like, really big kind of events going on on the infra side. ETC, this conference, it wasn't about infra at all. In fact, I barely talked about infra with one person, or, like, layer twos or anything. It was really about RWAs, tokenization, you know, some privacy, AI agents, of course, as well. But it's really about this next phase of Ethereum, which I guess we'll talk about in the show today. So I think times are really tough. Like, there's no doubt on the social side of Encrypto, like, you know, many projects aren't raising, some funds aren't raising. But what I do think is quite interesting is that European funds seem to be raising still, which I think is interesting. So like, maybe if the talent's not here yet, it might come back because the capital is still here. So yeah, overall, I think it's been a really great conference and formative conference. Like the people who are here mean business. And that means that you're spending time with really high quality people that you can get a lot of insights from. So yeah, I've enjoyed it. It's been a great conference, but I'm also wondering as a VC now, like where are the best founders? Are they still coming to these kinds of events like ETH Denver and ATC, or do they go to like the Stripe events now maybe, which is definitely a thought that I've been having more recently. And so I will be attending that NSF in a few weeks and be able to get back to you then.

**Michael Ippolito** (4:01)
Yeah, I think I have a lot of the same thoughts. I think, you know, someone like a year ago put this in really concise, interesting terms, which was a lot of people in crypto treat it like a lifestyle. And I've been reminded of that statement walking around Khan because you're in Khan, it's sunny, there's palm trees. And the general sentiment that I've heard from people is like, yeah, there's some business to be done here, but this is really a place that I go to hang out with my friends. And I think that it's very interesting to juxtapose that with, I think if you look at some of these other ecosystems that are playing to win, it's a very different mindset. Obviously, a much smaller, they're not even ecosystems in the same comparable way, but there's a very different attitude. And it's kind of interesting to a lot of the conversations that I had with founders, especially on the smaller side. There's a pretty common thing, I think, which is a bunch of founders have raised, especially in the infraspace, something like that over the course of the last three or four years, haven't been able to find PMF and are just slowly bleeding. I would guess that over the course of the next year or so, there's a lot of folks either closing up shop or potentially M&A, that kind of aqua hire type situations and consolidation, especially in the infraspace. I will say, I do think there's the opportunity for a couple valuable infrabusinesses to get built, if you can vertically integrate and consolidate. So there'll be one or two very valuable, I think, winners that are the last man standing that emerge from that category. But generally, the trend of the conference of the last couple of years is smaller and smaller.