Author: Juan Leon, Senior Investment Strategist at Bitwise; Compiled by: 0xjs@金财经

Two key narratives dominate cryptocurrency headlines in 2024: the launch and creation of Bitcoin ETFs Driven by record capital inflows, Bitcoin has risen rapidly; and driven by speculation in Meme coins, Solana has become the darling of retail investors.

This has left Ethereum—the world’s second-largest cryptoasset—largely ignored. Of course, its 66% year-to-date return isn't bad in absolute terms, but it pales in comparison to Solana's 106% and Bitcoin's 130%.

But something interesting has happened recently: In the past 10 days, investors have started to take an interest in Ethereum again.

You can clearly see this in the spot Ethereum ETFs, which have attracted as much as $2 billion in net inflows during this time. By comparison, the same ETF saw net inflows of just $250 million in the first four months.

So what’s going on here?

This realization dawned on me when I reviewed Bitwise’s recently released crypto predictions for 2025. Among various price predictions, we lay out several “real-world” megatrends that we believe will shape the industry in the year ahead, from the continued rise of stablecoins to the proliferation of AI agents using cryptocurrencies to transact.

But one of the biggest and most overlooked opportunities centers around tokenization: the process of bringing the vast market for real-world assets (RWA) to the blockchain.

Today, the market is dominated by Ethereum.

Tokenization refers to the process of digitizing traditional financial assets, such as Treasury bonds or real estate, into tokens that can be traded on the blockchain. Tokenization promises to make the buying, selling, and settlement of financial assets faster, cheaper, and more digital. Many believe it could upend the fundamental foundations of how financial markets work.

This is not just a story for tomorrow. Tokenized assets are currently growing rapidly, with companies such as BlackRock and UBS introducing tokenized real-world assets into the network, covering securities, commodities, real estate, private equity, etc. BlackRock, for example, has a $578 million tokenized Treasury fund and is looking to do more. We believe tokenized fund assets will triple next year, with Ethereum being the driving force behind it.

To paraphrase an old saying: you won’t get fired for building on Ethereum.

Ethereum is the most battle-tested, safest and most decentralized smart contract platform. Since its founding in 2015, it has become a leader in decentralized applications, smart contracts, and tokenization. It currently dominates the tokenized asset market with 81% of its long-termA proven track record and a large network of distributed validators gives asset managers confidence in the security and reliability of their assets when moving them on-chain.

Here’s the thing: It’s hard to overstate how big the RWA market is. Global real-world assets are worth approximately $100 trillion. Most of these assets will take time (perhaps decades) to move onto the tokenization track. But if it does, fees on RWA-related assets could exceed $100 billion annually. That’s more than 40 times Ethereum’s total fees of $2.4 billion so far this year. With the incoming pro-crypto SEC expected to provide the regulatory clarity needed to accelerate tokenization, investors betting on Ethereum now could be in for handsome returns in the time to come.

This is just one of the many reasons why we believe 2025 is the year Ethereum returns to its peak.