Ethereum, Stablecoins, and the Operating System of Global Finance

I first understood the power of programmable money not on Wall Street or in Silicon Valley, but in the streets of Lagos and São Paulo. Living across five continents and working in mobile payments, I saw firsthand how fragile currencies and unreliable banking infrastructure forced people to improvise. Later, acquiring the first bank for Tether and launching an early corporate blockchain pilot with JPMorgan and GE, it became clear that stable, programmable value would not just supplement existing finance, it would eventually rewrite it.

That rewriting is now underway. What once looked like fringe experimentation is becoming the foundation for a new financial system. Stablecoins are already a $260 billion market. Tokenization of treasuries, equities, and real estate is accelerating. And Ethereum, once dismissed as an unruly developer playground, is becoming the invisible settlement layer behind both open networks and corporate finance experiments.

Stablecoins as the First Proof of Concept

Stablecoins are the clearest sign that tokenization is not hype. For hundreds of millions of people, especially in countries battling inflation and capital controls, dollar-backed stablecoins are not speculation; they are survival. In Argentina, Nigeria, and Turkey, citizens use USDC and USDT to escape collapsing local currencies. In practice, this makes stablecoins the reserve asset of the internet age, a role regulators in Washington and Brussels often miss when framing them as narrow compliance challenges.

This geopolitical asymmetry matters. While advanced economies debate risks, the rest of the world is adopting stablecoins as de facto infrastructure. And because stablecoins flow most easily on Ethereum rails (Ethereum captures >50% of supply and >60% of volume), every new user strengthens the gravitational pull of Ethereum's ecosystem.

Tokenization Beyond the Buzzword

The next wave goes far beyond digital dollars. The White House's 168-page strategy recently estimated over $600 billion in assets tokenized by 2030 - a figure that looks almost quaint given the scale of global markets: $120 trillion in real estate, $100 trillion in equities, $13 trillion in treasuries, and $12 trillion in gold.

10 years ago I saw early signs of where tokenization was headed. When platforms like tZERO and later Securitize launched, I advised that they raise aggressively because true scale would take a decade to arrive. That moment is now here.

Skeptics are right to note tokenization isn't new. We've seen false starts in fractional art and boutique security tokens. But something fundamental has changed: the infrastructure has matured. Custodians like Anchorage, platforms like Securitize, and a robust DeFi ecosystem now exist to give tokenized assets utility. A tokenized treasury bill isn't just a digital wrapper; it's collateral that can move instantly, plug into automated liquidity strategies, or power programmable payments.

This is the real story: tokenization transforms assets from static stores of value into dynamic pieces of code. Once capital is programmable, entirely new financial behaviors emerge. Today, Ethereum already hosts 90% of tokenized assets.

Ethereum as the Settlement Standard

That is why Ethereum matters. It is not simply another blockchain; it is the programmable settlement infrastructure for this financial internet. Permissionless, censorship-resistant, and already home to the majority of tokenized activity, Ethereum provides the base layer where these new assets can actually interact.

The trend line is unmistakable. Even permissioned corporate chains, from JPMorgan's Onyx to new experiments by fintech giants, keep returning to Ethereum's design. The Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) has become the common language of programmable finance, much as Microsoft Excel once became the default operating system of Wall Street. What Excel did for spreadsheets, the EVM is now doing for ledgers: creating a universal grammar of value.

Corpo-L1s and the EVM Empire

The latest entrants prove the point. Circle has launched Arc, a permissioned L1 built for stablecoin finance, run by a consortium of 20 institutional validators. Stripe is building Tempo, likely with Paradigm's RETH client, positioning itself to own backend settlement for its massive developer ecosystem.

At first glance, these look like sterile databases, intranets with marketing gloss. But history suggests otherwise. Corporations that adopt EVM-compatible rails are implicitly tying themselves back to Ethereum's ecosystem. Even if Arc and Tempo don't yet issue tokens, the gravitational pull of incentives almost guarantees they eventually will. And when they do, developers and liquidity will flow toward them - but always with Ethereum as the settlement reference point.

This is the overlooked feedback loop: every corpo-L1, even permissioned, expands the EVM empire. Just as Excel became unavoidable in finance, Solidity developers are becoming table stakes for any financial institution that wants to remain relevant. In the long run, that accrues value not to the corpo-chains themselves, but to Ethereum, the root infrastructure they cannot avoid.

The Geopolitical Layer

Seen globally, the rise of programmable assets is less about efficiency and more about power. Stablecoins extend dollar hegemony even as countries like China, Russia, and blocs in the Middle East seek to settle trade in alternative rails. The EU talks about "digital sovereignty." Authoritarian states will likely prefer permissioned systems they can control. Liberal economies will lean toward open ones.

Ethereum, in this context, is more than a blockchain. It is a neutral public good, a contested space where states, corporations, and individuals will all seek leverage. In the same way maritime routes once determined geopolitical power, programmable settlement layers will define the next era of globalization.

Opportunities and Blind Spots

The real opportunity isn't just in guessing which assets will be tokenized. It's in recognizing the shift in logic: capital itself becomes programmable. That means treasuries that double as collateral, equities that embed governance, real estate that streams rental income directly to token holders, and AI agents managing portfolios in real time.

The blind spot is thinking these changes can be contained within old regulatory and institutional silos. They can't. Once assets move like information, the gravity shifts to the networks that can settle them fastest, safest, and most transparently. Today, that is Ethereum and its rollups.

Conclusion

Having lived through the rise of mobile money in emerging economies, helped to bank Tether in 2013, and implemented first blockchain pilots with Fortune 50 firms, I see the same pattern repeating at global scale. Stablecoins are already a parallel dollar system. Tokenization is not just marketing; it is capital becoming software. And Ethereum, through the quiet expansion of the EVM, is embedding itself as the operating system of programmable finance.

Wall Street may not yet realize it, but in hiring EVM developers and spinning up private chains, it is already halfway down the rabbit hole. Just as no bank could ignore Excel, no financial institution will be able to ignore the EVM. And that shift, from paper to programmable, is not measured in billions. It is measured in trillions.

Sources:

• 51 Insights: "Money movement 2.0" (2025)

• Circle: "USDC stablecoin market cap near $32B" (2025).

• CoinMarketCap: Stablecoins total market cap ~$260B (2025).

• Chainalysis: Stablecoin adoption in Argentina, Turkey, Nigeria (2023).

• IMF: Dollarization through stablecoins in emerging markets (2023).

Tokenization projections

• World Economic Forum: Tokenization of assets could reach $24T by 2030 (2023).

• White House Digital Assets Framework (2022): 168-page crypto strategy (some claims about $600B come from secondary commentary).

DeFi infrastructure & tokenized T-bills

• BlackRock BUIDL Fund: First tokenized U.S. Treasury fund (2023).

• Franklin Templeton BENJI tokenized MMF: SEC-registered on Stellar & Polygon(2023).

• Galaxy Research: Tokenized T-bills surpass $1B (2024).

Ethereum as financial settlement layer

• Electric Capital Developer Report: Ethereum dev dominance (2023).

• Bankless: "The EVM is Wall Street's New Microsoft Excel" (2024).

Geopolitics & stablecoins

• BIS: Stablecoins & monetary sovereignty concerns (2023).

• EU digital euro initiative: ECB progress report (2024).

• US Treasury: Concerns on dollar primacy, stablecoins (2023).