From Berlin attic to a $420 billion empire: Ethereum has reshaped the underlying logic of global finance in ten years.

Ten years ago, Vitalik Buterin and a group of developers squeezed into a poorly-ventilated attic in Berlin, with lightbulbs hanging around them, laptops on mismatched chairs and broken desks. They were not corporate giants or venture-backed founders, but a group of idealists, working day and night to turn a radical idea into reality. In this simple office, they launched the first live network of Ethereum, called "Frontier". It was very basic - no interface, incomplete functionality, and far from user-friendly. But it could mine, execute smart contracts, and allow developers to test decentralized applications. This marked the transition of Ethereum from an abstract concept to a real existing system. While Bitcoin was dominating the headlines as "digital gold", what they were building was quite different: programmable money, a financial operating system. Through code, funds could be transferred, contracts automatically executed, and business conducted without the need for banks or brokers. A year ago, in Zurich 520 miles away from Zurich, Paul Brody received a call from IBM - they said "there's an unsupervised child wandering around the lab." "That's not a child," Brody replied, "it's Vitalik. He may have grown up, but he still looks young." At that time, Buterin was building the framework for Ethereum. This blockchain, which was still in the Alpha stage, later became the prototype of a $420 billion platform, reshaping Wall Street and driving global decentralized finance, NFTs, and tokenized markets. At that time, Brody was leading a research team at IBM, and he vividly remembers how quickly the idea took off. "Someone in the team came to me and said, 'I met a very interesting person with a cool idea... like an upgraded version of Bitcoin, but faster and easier to program,'" he recalled, "and I thought, 'This is it, this is what we need.'" With Buterin's assistance, IBM built the first blockchain prototype based on early Ethereum code and jointly unveiled it with Samsung at CES in 2015. "This eventually set me on this path," Brody said, "I abandoned all other technology and basically switched to blockchain." Even now, as the global blockchain lead at EY, Brody still remembers the envy he felt at the time: "Just a kid, nothing special," he lamented, "I envy Vitalik... for being able to do this. At my age, there wouldn't have been this opportunity." Ten years later, this experiment has quietly reshaped the global market. "The success and development in this field far exceeded almost everyone's expectations," Buterin said. He recalled that ten years ago, the cryptocurrency community was "just a small circle," with only a few people dedicated to projects like Bitcoin. Today, Ethereum has become a "big deal," with major companies launching assets on its base and second-layer networks, some countries' economies starting to run on Ethereum infrastructure, which is a far cry from the original cypherpunk style. But Buterin warns that mainstream adoption comes with risks. He is concerned that if issuers or intermediary institutions become too concentrated, they might become the "actual controllers of the ecosystem." He described a scenario that appears open but is actually centralized: all keys managed by a few providers. "That's not what we want," he said. From underground to mainstream Prague's Manifesto may have become the anarchist tech hub of the city's Holesovice district, with its maze-like stairs and dim corridors, mirroring the physical mapping of the cryptocurrency world - a resistance movement and an experiment to reshape power. Based on Vclav Benda's concept of a "parallel society," decentralized technologies provide a refuge for people to evade state surveillance. Buterin, who calls himself a "digital nomad," found belonging among cypherpunks and idealists. At the time, Buterin believed that the greatest value of cryptocurrency lay not in speculative trading, but in helping people in emerging markets survive financial system collapses. "We often feel that those basic but boring functions can bring enormous value," he said, "integration into the global economy - these are what they lack, but can create tremendous value for locals." Even in Prague, programmers were striving to achieve fast, uncensored payments, and this technology was still seen as a resistance movement - protecting privacy, opposing authority. In countries plagued by bank failures and unreliable currencies, this technology became a lifeline. This year, Buterin delivered the keynote address at Ethereum's flagship conference at the Palais des Festivals - the venue for the annual red carpet movie star event in spring. This mirrors the development of Ethereum: from underground hacker spaces to networks coveted by governments, banks, and brokerages. Brody pointed out that the most crucial aspect is the deep integration of Ethereum with traditional finance. "The global financial system can be described as a complete pipeline network," he said, "and now Ethereum is being integrated into this infrastructure." He mentioned that until recently, cryptocurrency operated very differently from traditional finance, but now it is directly integrated into core trading systems, laying the foundation for large-scale fund flows (from investors to daily savers) and pushing old mechanisms to migrate to the Ethereum platform - where fund transfers are faster, costs are lower, and functionality is more advanced. Becoming a "pipeline" of Wall Street Stablecoins (digital dollars) based on Ethereum support trillions of dollars in payments, tokenized assets, and on-chain fund flows. Robinhood recently launched tokenized US stocks on Ethereum's second-layer network, Arbitrum. Approximately 65% of Circle's USDC (the second-largest stablecoin) trading volume still settles on Ethereum. According to the latest "Stablecoin Status" report by CoinGecko, Ethereum accounts for almost 50% of all stablecoin activities. With Circle's IPO and the signing of the "Stablecoin Act" (GENIUS Act) by Trump, regulators now have new reasons to participate in the transition rather than hinder it. Data from Deutsche Bank Aktiengesellschaft shows that stablecoin trading volume reached $28 trillion last year, exceeding the sum of Mastercard and Visa. The bank has announced plans to build a tokenization platform on zkSync (a fast, low-cost Ethereum layer 2 network) to help asset managers issue and manage tokenized funds, stablecoins, and other real-world assets while meeting regulatory and data protection requirements. Digital asset exchanges such as Coinbase (COIN.US) and Kraken are competing to capture the intersection of traditional securities and cryptocurrencies. Coinbase has announced plans to introduce tokenized stocks and prediction markets for US users in the coming months, diversifying its revenue streams and competing more directly with brokerages like Robinhood (HOOD.US) and eToro Group (ETOR.US). Kraken has announced plans to offer round-the-clock trading of tokenized US stocks in some international markets. BlackRock, Inc. launched the tokenized money market fund BUIDL on Ethereum last year, providing qualified investors with on-chain access to returns and settling real-time redemptions in USDC. While new blockchains boast faster speeds and lower fees, Ethereum has proven its durability as a global trusted network. When asked about institutional demand for Ethereum, Buterin said, "Many institutions have told us directly that they value Ethereum for its stability and reliability - it won't just crash." He also added that institutions often inquire about long-term issues such as privacy, "these are what they truly value." Institutions are choosing different layer 2 networks to meet specific needs: Robinhood uses Arbitrum, Deutsche Bank Aktiengesellschaft chooses zkSync, and Coinbase and Kraken prefer Optimism, but they all ultimately return to the Ethereum base layer. "The value of Ethereum lies in its global coverage, massive capital flows, and extreme programmability," Brody said. He acknowledged that Ethereum is not the fastest or has the shortest settlement time among blockchains, "but more importantly, it is the most widely adopted and flexible system." Brody believes that history shows industries tend to consolidate. Most battles over technical standards are eventually dominated by a single platform. In his view, Ethereum is likely to become the dominant programmable layer, while Bitcoin plays a complementary role as a safe haven and scarcity-driven asset. "Engineers like to set standards and expand," he said, "and that's exactly what Ethereum is doing." Tomasz Staczak, the newly appointed Co-Executive Director of the Ethereum Foundation, sees the same trend from within the ecosystem. "Institutions continue to choose Ethereum for its value," he said, "which has never been interrupted in the past ten years. We continue to upgrade, always focusing on security and resistance to censorship." When institutions send orders to the market, they need to ensure fair processing, no bias, and immediate execution of trades. "Ethereum can provide these assurances," Staczak added. As traditional finance shifts to blockchain, these assurances become more valuable. Expanding without losing essence The development of Ethereum has not been easy. It has experienced highs and lows, with competitors promising faster speeds and criticism for being slow and costly to use on a large scale. But it has outlasted almost all early competitors. In 2022, Ethereum will replace its old transaction verification mechanism (proof of work - where computers compete to solve complex problems) with proof of stake (where users lock up Ethereum as collateral to maintain network security). This shift reduces energy consumption by over 99% and paves the way for upgrades to improve application performance and reduce costs. The next ten years will test whether Ethereum can scale while maintaining its principles uncompromised. Buterin says the immediate priority is to bring the technical goals to the "finish line," enhancing scalability and speed while keeping decentralization and security at the core, ideally making these features even stronger. For example, zero-knowledge proofs can significantly increase transaction capacity while allowing verification of chain rules on small devices like smartwatches. The team also knows that algorithm improvements are needed to protect Ethereum from large-scale computational attacks. Buterin believes that implementing these improvements is one way to make Ethereum "a truly valuable part of the global infrastructure, helping the internet and the economy to be more free and open." Buterin points out that real change doesn't burst forth like fireworks, but may have already happened before most people realize it. "This disruption is not about overthrowing existing systems," he said, "but about building new things, evolving continually, until more and more people realize: even if they don't want to pay attention to the old system, they no longer need to look back." Brody has seen signs of the future: wire transfers happening on-chain, assets like stocks and real estate being tokenized, and eventually, enterprises will automatically execute all contracts on a single shared infrastructure - funds, products, terms, and conditions. "One of the lessons technology adoption teaches us is that we are not simply replacing old systems," he said, "when new things emerge, we tend to build new technology infrastructure. My assumption is that it will be more attractive to place new financial products on the blockchain - and we will try to do things on the blockchain that are currently impossible." If Brody and Buterin's judgment is correct, the real disruption will not make headlines, but will quietly become the way funds flow - invisible, yet unstoppable.