“Joe Lubin Predicts Ethereum Could Soar by 100 Times”

Co-founder of Ethereum and CEO of ConsenSys, Joseph Lubin sparked ETH discussions on August 30 with an unusually comprehensive thesis regarding the network’s financial and institutional progression, contending that Wall Street will transition its primary infrastructure to Ethereum frameworks and that ETH “will likely increase 100x from here,” ultimately “flippen[ing] the Bitcoin/BTC monetary base.”

“I fully align with nearly all of Tom @fundstrat’s assertions here,” Lubin stated, before outlining a future where significant financial institutions “stake, operate validators, [and] manage L2s/L3s,” enhance DeFi involvement, and “develop smart contract software for agreements, processes, and financial instruments.”

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He specifically mentioned JPMorgan as a bank already deeply integrated with Ethereum technology since “2014–2015.” “The only discrepancy I have with Tom’s comments… is that he is not nearly optimistic enough,” Lubin noted. “However, the significant issue is that being excessively bullish is impossible.”

Lubin’s Ambitious Vision for Ethereum

Lubin also sought to disrupt a common narrative regarding scaling compromises, arguing that “the narrative of L2s overtaking L1 will soon be debunked.” He directed attention to Consensys’ Linea network and a recently launched “Proof-of-Burn” initiative as instances of coordination mechanisms that could bolster Ethereum’s foundational economics rather than weaken them.

The second aspect of Lubin’s thesis revolved around tokenizing Ethereum’s burn into a transferable asset referred to as BETH, presented last week by the Ethereum Community Foundation (ECF). In subsequent posts, Lubin encouraged the community to “explore all the implications of tokenizing and explicitly accounting for burned ETH,” even proposing a playful incentive experiment: “Would you burn a bit of ETH for [a @BanklessHQ] episode? … Would some of you send a portion of that BETH to @BanklessHQ?” Beyond promotional tactics, he sketched potential demand sinks and governance opportunities: “Could there be an increasing demand for BETH as it assumes signaling and voting authority across various contexts?”

According to the ECF framework, BETH is an immutable ERC-20 that mints 1:1 when ETH is verifiably destroyed. The contract sends deposits to the designated burn address and issues BETH to the depositor; supply corresponds to cumulative burned ETH by design, with no administrator keys and no redemption route back to ETH. This positions burn—not issuance—as the productive measure yielding a new asset reflecting alignment with scarcity. The reference implementation and contract address were shared by the ECF together with a blog explanation.

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Lubin then speculated on derivative layers that could develop atop BETH—“BBETH, BBBETH, etc.”—as context-specific assets. He likened this to early “colored coins” on Bitcoin, with a pivotal distinction: these “variations of BETH” would exist natively within Ethereum’s token standards and tools, removing the off-chain recognition dilemma that obstructed first-generation experiments. “One might consider [BBETH/BBBETH] as a more sophisticated element of ‘cracked ETH’… more scarce,” Lubin articulated, proposing games and other restricted economies as potential testing grounds.

The imminent market context arose through Fundstrat’s Tom Lee, whose latest public remarks have been markedly positive regarding Ethereum’s institutional trajectory. Lee has maintained that Wall Street’s operational framework is shifting to blockchains, that ETFs and staking rails offer investable structures for compliance-ready capital, and that Ethereum may represent the “largest macro trade over the next ten to fifteen years.” For his part, Lubin mentioned that the two “occasionally connect on calls” to align strategies in overlapping areas while “competing in distinctly different manners.”

At the time of reporting, ETH was trading at approximately $4,399.

Featured image crafted with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com