Etherealize co-founder and CEO Vivek Raman argues that banks building private, permissioned blockchains are recreating the same settlement inefficiencies they are trying to escape. He says Ethereum's public infrastructure offers a neutral settlement layer that closed networks cannot match, even as ether's price has yet to reflect that institutional case.
Vivek Raman has a message for banks building private blockchains: the approach recreates the slow, expensive settlement problems it claims to solve. Raman says permissioned, closed-loop networks sacrifice the transparency, interoperability, and shared settlement infrastructure that make blockchain useful in the first place.
From Wall Street trading desks to Ethereum
Raman's case draws on his own background. Before founding Etherealize, he spent years in high-yield credit trading at Morgan Stanley and UBS, then moved into crypto through BitOoda. His conclusion is that public blockchain infrastructure, specifically Ethereum, offers a neutral settlement layer every counterparty can trust without trusting each other. Etherealize has backed the thesis with a $40 million raise to build zero-knowledge privacy infrastructure and institutional applications, using zero-knowledge proofs to give institutions compliance-grade privacy while still settling on a public network.
"Digital oil" for tokenized markets
Etherealize frames ETH as "digital oil," the fuel for tokenized markets, with a stated goal of moving trillions of dollars on-chain within three to five years. He has pointed to the $16 trillion US mortgage market as a prime tokenization candidate, arguing zero-knowledge tools can solve the privacy requirements that have kept institutions on the sidelines. In a June 2026 interview, Raman said Ethereum's foundational Wall Street infrastructure is nearly complete.
That said, ether's price hasn't reflected this institutional optimism, and Raman has acknowledged the gap between the adoption narrative and the market's current valuation of the asset.
Institutions already moving on-chain
Tokenization has moved from theoretical to operational across Wall Street over the past 18 months, with BlackRock's BUIDL fund and Franklin Templeton's on-chain money market products among the examples. Ethereum isn't the only public chain courting this business, however: Solana, Avalanche, and purpose-built chains like Provenance are pursuing their own tokenization strategies. Etherealize's bet is that Ethereum's security guarantees, developer ecosystem, and network effects make it the default choice for institutional-grade settlement.
Source: Crypto Briefing
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