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CNBC
an hour ago
- CNBC
Ethereum turns 10: From scrappy experiment to Wall Street's invisible backbone
CANNES — Ten years ago, Vitalik Buterin and a small band of developers huddled in a drafty Berlin loft strung with dangling lightbulbs, laptops balanced on mismatched chairs and chipped tables. They weren't corporate titans or venture-backed founders — just idealists working long nights to push a radical idea into reality. From that sparse office, they launched "Frontier," Ethereum's first live network. It was bare-bones — no interface, no polish, nothing user-friendly. But it could mine, execute smart contracts, and let developers test decentralized applications. It was the spark that transformed Ethereum from an abstract concept into a living, breathing system. Bitcoin had captured headlines as "digital gold," but what they built was something else entirely: programmable money, a financial operating system where code could move funds, enforce contracts, and create businesses without banks or brokers. One year earlier and 520 miles away in Zurich, Paul Brody got a call from IBM security: A kid was wandering the lab unattended. "That's not a child," Brody told them. "That's Vitalik. He's a grown-up — he just looks really young." At the time, Buterin had just founded Ethereum. The blockchain was still in its alpha stage, an early build of what would become a $420 billion platform rewiring Wall Street and powering decentralized finance, NFTs, and tokenized markets across the globe. Brody, then leading a research team at IBM, remembers how quickly the idea clicked. "One of the guys on the research team came to me and said, 'I've met this really interesting guy. He's got a really cool like a version of bitcoin, but we're going to make it much faster and programmable,'" he said. "And when he said that to me, I thought, 'That's it. That is what I want. That is what we need.'" With Buterin's help, IBM built its first blockchain prototype on Ethereum's early code, unveiling it at CES in 2015 alongside Samsung. "That was how I ended up down this path," Brody said. "I was done with all other technology and basically made the switch to blockchain." Even now, as EY's global blockchain leader, Brody remembers feeling a pang of envy. "This is a kid, and it doesn't matter," he said. "I was jealous of Vitalik… to be able to do that." He added, "I don't think opportunities like that could have been surfaced when I was that age." Now, a decade later, that experiment has quietly rewired global markets. "It's very impressive, just how much the space has succeeded and grown into, beyond pretty much anyone's expectations," Buterin told CNBC in Cannes on the sidelines of the blockchain's flagship event in Europe. Buterin said the change over the past decade has been staggering. Ten years ago, he recalled, the crypto community was "just a very small space," with only a handful of people working on bitcoin and a few other projects. Since then, Ethereum has become "this big thing," Buterin said, with major corporations now launching assets on both its base layer and layer-two networks. Parts of national economies are beginning to run on Ethereum infrastructure, a far cry from its cypherpunk origins. But Buterin warned that mainstream adoption brings risks as well as benefits. One concern is that if too few issuers or intermediaries dominate, they could become "de facto controllers of the ecosystem." He described a scenario where Ethereum might appear open, but, in practice, all the keys are managed by centralized providers. "That's the thing that we don't want," he said. Two years earlier in Prague, CNBC met Buterin at Paralelní Polis, a sprawling industrial complex turned anarchist tech hub in the city's Holešovice district. The building's labyrinthine staircases and shadowed corridors felt like a physical map of the crypto world itself — part resistance movement, part experiment in reimagining power. It was a place built on Václav Benda's concept of a "parallel society," where decentralized technologies offered refuge from state surveillance and control. It's the kind of place where Buterin, a self-described nomad, found himself at home among cypherpunks and cryptographic idealists. At the time, Buterin described crypto's greatest utility not in speculative trading, but in helping people survive broken financial systems in emerging markets. "The stuff that we often find a bit basic and boring is exactly the stuff that brings lots of value," he told CNBC at the time. "Just being able to plug into the international economy — these are things that they don't have, and these are things that provide huge value for people there." Even in Prague, where coders worked to make payments fast and censorship-resistant, the technology felt like a resistance movement — privacy-preserving, anti-authoritarian, a lifeline in countries where banking collapses were common and money couldn't be trusted. This year, Buterin keynoted Ethereum's flagship conference at the Palais des Festivals — the same red carpet venue that hosts movie stars each spring. It was a fitting symbol of Ethereum's journey: from underground hacker dens to a network that governments, banks, and brokerages are now racing to build upon. Brody, who currently leads blockchain strategy at EY, says what matters most is how deeply Ethereum is integrating into traditional finance. "The global financial system is really nicely described as a whole network of pipes," he said. "What's happening now is that Ethereum is getting plumbed into this infrastructure," Brody continued, noting that until recently, crypto operated on entirely separate rails from traditional finance. Now, he said, Ethereum is being wired directly into core transaction systems, setting the stage for massive financial flows — from investors to everyday savers — to migrate away from older mechanisms toward Ethereum-based platforms that can move money faster, at lower cost, and with more advanced functionality than legacy systems allow. Stablecoins — digital dollars that live on Ethereum — power trillions in payments, tokenized assets and funds are moving on-chain, and Robinhood recently rolled out tokenized U.S. equities via Arbitrum, an Ethereum-based layer two. Circle's USDC — the second-largest stablecoin — still settles around 65% of its volume on Ethereum's rails. According to CoinGecko's latest "State of Stablecoins" report, Ethereum accounts for nearly 50% of all stablecoin activity. Between Circle's IPO and the stablecoin-focused GENIUS Act, now signed into law by President Donald Trump, regulators have new reason to engage with, rather than fight, this transformation. Data from Deutsche Bank shows stablecoin transactions hit $28 trillion last year — more than Mastercard and Visa combined. The bank itself has announced plans to build a tokenization platform on zkSync, a fast, cost-efficient Ethereum layer two designed 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 like Coinbase and Kraken are racing to capture this crossover between traditional securities and crypto. As part of its quarterly earnings release, Coinbase said this week it's launching tokenized stocks and prediction markets for U.S. users in the coming months, a move that would diversify its revenue stream and bring it into more direct competition with brokerages like Robinhood and eToro. Kraken announced plans to offer 24/7 trading of U.S. stock tokens in select overseas markets. BlackRock's tokenized money market fund, BUIDL, launched on Ethereum last year, offering qualified investors on-chain access to yield with real-time redemptions settled in USDC. Even as newer blockchains tout faster speeds and lower fees, Ethereum has proven its staying power as the trusted network for global finance. Buterin told CNBC in Cannes that there's a misconception about what institutions actually want. "A lot of institutions basically tell us to our faces that they value Ethereum because it's stable and dependable, because it doesn't go down," he said. He added that firms frequently ask about privacy and other long-term features — the kinds of concerns that institutions, he said, "really value." Different institutions are choosing different layer twos for different needs — Robinhood uses Arbitrum, Deutsche Bank zkSync, Coinbase and Kraken Optimism — but they all ultimately settle on Ethereum's base layer. "The value proposition of Ethereum is its global reach, its huge capital flows, its incredible programmability," Brody said. He added that the fact it isn't the fastest blockchain or the one with the quickest settlement times "is secondary to the fact that it's overall the most widely adopted and flexible system." Brody also believes history points toward consolidation. He said that in most technology standards wars, one platform ultimately dominates. In his view, Ethereum is likely to become that dominant programmability layer, while Bitcoin plays a complementary role as a risk-off, scarcity-driven asset. Engineers, he said, "love to work on a standard… to scale on a standard," and Ethereum has become precisely that. Tomasz Stańczak, the newly appointed co-executive director of the Ethereum Foundation, sees the same pattern from inside the ecosystem. "Institutions chose Ethereum over and over again for its values," Stańczak said. "Ten years without stopping for a moment. Ten years of upgrades with a huge dedication to security and censorship resistance." When institutions send an order to the market, they want to be sure that it's treated fairly, that nobody has preference, and that the transaction is executed at the time when it's delivered. "That's what Ethereum guarantees," added Stańczak. Those assurances have become more valuable as traditional finance moves on-chain. Ethereum's path hasn't been smooth. The network has weathered spectacular booms and busts, rivals promising faster speeds, and criticism that it's too slow or expensive for mass adoption. Yet it has outlasted nearly all early competitors. In 2022, Ethereum replaced its old transaction validation method, proof-of-work — where armies of computers competed to solve puzzles — with proof-of-stake, where users lock up their ether as collateral to help secure the network. The shift cut Ethereum's energy use by more than 99% and set the stage for upgrades aimed at making apps faster and cheaper to run on its base layer. The next decade will test whether Ethereum can scale without compromise. Buterin said the first priority is getting Ethereum to "the finish line" in terms of its technical goals. That means improving scalability and speed without sacrificing its core principles of decentralization and security — and ideally making those properties even stronger. Zero-knowledge proofs, for example, could dramatically increase transaction capacity while making it possible to verify that the chain is following the rules of the protocol on something as small as a smartwatch. There are also algorithmic changes the team already knows are needed to protect Ethereum against large-scale computing attacks. Implementing those, Buterin said, is part of the path to making Ethereum "a really valuable part of global infrastructure that helps make the internet and the economy a more free and open place." Buterin believes the real change won't come with fireworks. He said it may already be unfolding years before most people recognize it. "This type of disruption doesn't feel like overturning the existing system," he said. "It feels like building a new thing that just keeps growing and growing until eventually more and more people realize you don't even have to look at the old thing if you didn't want to." Brody can already see hints of that future. Wire transfers are moving on-chain, assets like stocks and real estate are being tokenized, and eventually, he said, businesses will run entire contracts — the money, the products, the terms and conditions — automatically on a single, shared infrastructure. That shift, Brody added, won't simply copy old financial systems onto new technology. "One of the lessons from technology adoption is that it's not that we replace like for like," he said. "When new things come along, we tend to build on a new technology infrastructure. My key hypothesis is that as we build new financial products, it will be attractive to build them on blockchain rails — and we'll try to do things on blockchain rails that we can't do today." If Brody and Buterin are right, the real disruption won't make headlines. It'll simply become the way money moves, unseen and unstoppable.
Tom's Guide
an hour ago
- Tom's Guide
iPhone 17 Air leak shows off impossibly thin battery — and it's bigger than we thought
We are so close to the launch of Apple's next iPhone generation. The iPhone 17 series is expected to be officially announced next month, and consistent rumors have suggested that there will be an iPhone 17 Air accompanying the usual suspects. A new rumor from reliable leaker Mijan Bu reveals the iPhone 17 Air's battery capacity, which is reportedly 2,900mAh, slightly larger than initially expected. The leak also says the battery is housed in a steel case. Previously, we had heard that Apple's extra-slim phone would have a 2,800mAh battery. Sure, it's only 100mAh difference, but when you're talking about a battery that small (the iPhone 16 uses a 3,561mAh battery, for perspective) any extra juice is a good thing. As scary as a battery that small is, reports indicate that it'll still offer a full day of battery life thanks to improvements in battery life technology and some performance tweaks in iOS 26. Obviously, we'll need to test this for ourselves to see if a battery under 3,000mAh can really meet the demands of iPhone users, but I'm hopeful. The battery is expected to be small, as previous reports have indicated that the phone will be just 5.5mm thick. The iPhone 16 is 7.8mm, so there's a noticeable difference in depth between the current phone and the rumored Air. If Apple manages to get to that rumored thickness, that would just beat the Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge, which measures 5.8mm. Apple may not be the first to release a thin phone, but it might have the thinnest, which seems to be the way Apple operates. The iPhone 17 Air is rumored to replace the iPhone 16 Plus in Apple's lineup, meaning the company would still release four devices — iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Air, iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max. Get instant access to breaking news, the hottest reviews, great deals and helpful tips. The current prevailing rumor has said that Apple will hold its iPhone 17 event between September 8 and 10, so we won't need to wait too long to learn all about the thin iPhone on the horizon.
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Bitcoin-To-Ethereum Rotation: Genius Move Or FOMO Trap? Here's What The Data Shows
Benzinga and Yahoo Finance LLC may earn commission or revenue on some items through the links below. As Ethereum trades near multi-month highs and Bitcoin's dominance faces fresh challenges, the ETH/BTC ratio is currently sitting at 0.058, sparking intense debate on Reddit among crypto veterans about whether now is the time to rotate capital from Bitcoin into Ethereum for potential alt season gains. The strategy—known in crypto circles as 'the rotation'—involves temporarily swapping Bitcoin holdings for Ethereum during periods when altcoins typically outperform the flagship cryptocurrency, then rotating back to Bitcoin after capturing those gains. It's a high-stakes game of market timing that has created generational wealth for some traders while leaving others with costly tax bills and diminished holdings. Don't Miss: Accredited Investors: Grab Pre-IPO Shares of the AI Company Powering Hasbro, Sephora & MGM— — no wallets, just price speculation and free paper trading to practice different strategies. The Case for Making the Move Proponents of the Bitcoin-to-Ethereum rotation point to compelling historical patterns and current market dynamics that suggest significant upside potential for ETH relative to BTC. Over the past 90 days, Ethereum has dramatically outpaced Bitcoin with a 102% gain compared to Bitcoin's more modest 22% advance, demonstrating the kind of explosive relative performance that rotation traders seek. The fundamental case for Ethereum has strengthened considerably, particularly with the Genius Act legislation accelerating institutional adoption of stablecoins—90% of which operate on Ethereum's network. This regulatory tailwind, combined with Ethereum's transition to a deflationary monetary policy since moving to proof-of-stake, creates a compelling structural argument for continued outperformance. Galaxy Research projects the ETH/BTC ratio could reach between 0.03 and 0.045, suggesting substantial room for growth from current levels. For context, the ratio has historically peaked much higher during previous market cycles, with some traders targeting ranges between 0.049 to 0.088 based on technical analysis of past bull markets. Trending: Grow your IRA or 401(k) with Crypto – . Tax-conscious investors have found creative workarounds to execute this strategy without triggering immediate capital gains. By using lending protocols to collateralize Bitcoin holdings and borrow stablecoins or additional Bitcoin to purchase Ethereum, traders can gain ETH exposure while maintaining their original BTC position on paper—though this approach carries its own risks around loan-to-value ratios and liquidation scenarios. The Bear Case: Too Late to the Party? However, seasoned crypto veterans are increasingly cautioning that the optimal entry window for this rotation may have already closed. After Ethereum's 100% surge over the past three months, critics argue that attempting the swap now amounts to 'FOMOing' into an already extended move. The margin of error for timing the eventual rotation back to Bitcoin has become significantly tighter compared to earlier opportunities when Ethereum traded below $2,000. Bitcoin maximalists maintain that BTC remains the superior long-term store of value, pointing to year-to-date performance where Bitcoin is up 25% compared to Ethereum's 11% gain. Market structure concerns add another layer of complexity. The ETH/BTC ratio recently dropped to 0.022, its lowest level since 2020, and some analysts worry that the 2017-style altcoin euphoria that drove massive relative outperformance may not materialize in the current institutional-dominated market lending protocol strategy that appeals to tax-sensitive investors carries substantial risks, particularly the possibility of liquidation if Ethereum fails to perform as expected or if Bitcoin experiences an unexpected rally. Given Bitcoin's tendency for sudden, explosive moves, traders could find themselves 'stuck with debt' while watching their collateralized Bitcoin appreciate without them. The Verdict: Risk Management Over FOMO For retail investors considering this strategy, the key consideration isn't whether Ethereum might outperform Bitcoin—it very well could. The critical question is whether the potential gains justify the risks of market timing, tax implications, and the possibility of missing Bitcoin's continued institutional adoption cycle. The safest approach may be gradual portfolio rebalancing rather than wholesale rotation, allowing investors to maintain exposure to both assets while managing downside risks. As one seasoned trader noted, 'In crypto, permanent capital beats performance chasing.' Those determined to execute a rotation strategy should consider starting with smaller position sizes and maintaining strict exit rules, remembering that in previous cycles, the window between altcoin peaks and Bitcoin resuming its dominance has often been measured in weeks, not months. Read Next: A must-have for all crypto enthusiasts: . Image: Shutterstock This article Bitcoin-To-Ethereum Rotation: Genius Move Or FOMO Trap? Here's What The Data Shows originally appeared on
