Grayscale On the Next Crypto Investing Holy Grail 

As crypto ETFs continue to expand in capability, Zach Pandl, Head of Research at Grayscale, shared what's on the near horizon for investors, as well as digging into everything Ethereum at Future Proof 2025. 

Transcription

Opening: What's Beyond the Biggest Cryptocurrencies

Nadig: You fought so hard to get us that first Bitcoin ETF. What about the rest of the ecosystem?

Pandl: First thing will be staking. So, Ethereum can earn a yield. Second, we're going to see lots more ETFs available in the not-too-distant future beyond bitcoin and ethereum.

 Ethereum: The "Home for Finance-Related Innovations"

Nadig: Hey there, I'm here with Zach Pandl, Head of Research at Grayscale Investments. Want to do a little lightning round here on ETH. I'm a big fan of ethereum. I've owned it as a coin for a long time. You guys have the cheapest ETH ETF out there. Talk a little bit about both owning ETH and where it sits in the ecosystem, and also owning some of those players who are going to be building the future of finance.

Pandl: Absolutely. ETH is one of the most exciting projects in crypto. It's really the home for the finance-related innovations. Blockchains offer innovations in digital money and digital finance. And Ethereum is really the home for the digital finance part of that, the home for stablecoins, tokenized assets, decentralized finance projects. And so it's not just a money asset, a store of value – it's an application platform with lots of things going on top of it.

Nadig: I always think about ethereum, the coin itself, the thing that gets traded and which is held by your fund, as kind of like the gas. They literally call it the gas when you burn it to make activity happen. Is this kind of like just owning oil?

Pandl: Some people put it that way. I don't love the metaphor because oil is not scarce. You know, oil is something that we can continue to pump out of the ground. Ethereum is like bitcoin. It is a scarce digital commodity. It can be thought of as a store of value in a way that oil can't. So there is more nuance to that. But it is at the same time, like oil, it is something usable, something that is functional inside the ecosystem of Ethereum, used for decentralized finance applications, AI applications, trading, borrowing, and lending,

Nadig: NFTs, tokens, all of that.

Pandl: NFTs, everything that happens on top of the Ethereum network.

Finding the Next Crypto Holy Grail

Nadig: So, let's talk about the ecosystem in general then. So, Ethereum isn't the end of the line. Let's talk about the other stuff around it.

Pandl: That's right. So, Grayscale is involved in the whole spectrum of projects happening in crypto: Bitcoin, Ethereum, and then all the applications that are built on top of them. So these are things like decentralized finance applications like Uniswap or Aave. These are applications built on Ethereum, and they're investable in the same way that Ethereum is investable. Grayscale provides access to those products through our structures.

Nadig: Great. And what do you think the next shoe to drop here is for somebody who's more on the traditional finance rails? We've seen a lot of growth in various crypto projects finally getting onto the ETF rails. Is there kind of a holy grail left for you all? You fought so hard to get us that first bitcoin ETF. What about the rest of the ecosystem? What else are we going to crack open?

Pandl: Honestly, there is a long way to go. First thing will be staking. So, ethereum can earn a yield – unlike Bitcoin, it has a natural yield. We're going to see staking products. Second, we're going to see lots more ETFs available in the not-too-distant future beyond bitcoin and ethereum. And then we're going to start to see major financial institutions, Wall Street banks, commercial banks starting to build on top of these networks and use them in their own process.

So, although crypto has come a long way, it's still a very long way to go. We're in middle innings of this process, and I think over the next couple of months investors will have a much broader range of products to choose from.

Nadig: Boy, it certainly seems like that boundary between decentralized finance and traditional finance gets smaller by the day. Thanks for giving us an update.

Pandl: Our pleasure. Thank you.