Ether’s price performance left many investors frustrated last cycle. While other assets captured attention with faster rallies, ETH has struggled to keep pace, raising questions about whether Ether is losing relevance or simply being misunderstood.
In a recent interview with Cointelegraph, Vivek Raman, CEO of Etherealize, an Ethereum-focused advisory firm, offered a very different perspective. Rather than focusing on short-term price action, Raman pointed to a growing gap between market sentiment and Ether’s (ETH) underlying fundamentals, which he says may shape how some investors and institutions assess Ethereum in 2026.
Raman argued that Ethereum remains dominant in areas he says are most relevant to institutional adoption. Today, the Ethereum network and its layer-2 chains host the majority of stablecoin activity, according to industry data, within a market that exceeds $300 billion globally. Ethereum is also the leading network for tokenized real-world assets, with data showing it accounts for more than 90% of all tokenized assets onchain.
The interview also examined how traditional finance is shifting from experimentation to real-world deployment. Several large financial firms, including JPMorgan Chase and Fidelity, have experimented with tokenized products linked to Ethereum-based infrastructure, though adoption remains limited. Raman argues that this shift has only recently become possible due to greater regulatory clarity, particularly in the United States.
Rather than offering a simple price forecast, Raman laid out a forward-looking framework linking the growth of stablecoins, tokenization and Ethereum’s role as neutral financial infrastructure. While still early, he says these structural trends could eventually prompt the market to reassess how ETH is valued.
The conversation challenges viewers to look beyond near-term price volatility and consider whether Ethereum’s recent underperformance may be obscuring what Raman views as a longer-term structural shift
To hear Raman’s outlook for 2026, watch the complete interview on the Cointelegraph YouTube channel.
Related: Efforts to bulletproof Ethereum are paying off in user metrics
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
