Ethereum Predicted to Soar to $15,000 by 2026 as ’Wall Street’s Default Chain’ - Vivek Raman’s Bullish Forecast

Wall Street's favorite blockchain just got a price target that would make a traditional banker choke on their morning coffee.

The Institutional Takeover

Forget the old-world finance playbook. The smart money isn't just dipping a toe in crypto anymore—it's building its entire digital infrastructure on Ethereum. Vivek Raman's call for a $15,000 ETH by 2026 isn't just a number; it's a declaration that the rails of global finance are being replaced, one smart contract at a time. The chain that birthed DeFi is now the one major institutions are quietly standardizing on, bypassing legacy systems that move at the speed of bureaucracy.

Beyond the Hype Cycle

This isn't about retail speculation. It's about Ethereum becoming the default settlement layer for everything from tokenized real-world assets to trillion-dollar treasury operations. The network effect is shifting from niche developers to Fortune 500 balance sheets. They're not here for the memes; they're here for the immutable ledger that never calls in sick and doesn't charge a 2% management fee for the privilege of losing to the market.

The $15,000 Reality Check

Hitting that price point means Ethereum's market cap starts to flirt with numbers that rival small countries' GDPs. It implies a level of institutional adoption that turns today's crypto-native protocols into tomorrow's financial utilities. The scaling is done, the regulators are (grudgingly) coming to the table, and the capital is waiting on the sidelines—ready to flood in once the last paper-handed skeptic finally gives up.

The old guard still thinks in ticker symbols and quarterly reports. The new wave? They're building on a chain that redefines value itself. Whether Raman's prediction hits or misses, one thing's clear: Wall Street's default chain won't be built by Wall Street. It'll just profit from it.

Institutions Will Tokenize On Ethereum

Raman’s core claim is that tokenization is moving from proof-of-concept into scaled product deployment, with Ethereum increasingly serving as the base layer institutions choose when the assets are high value and the operational requirements are strict. He describes tokenization as a business-process upgrade that collapses assets, data, and payments onto shared infrastructure, and he leaned heavily on the idea that once institutions experience the efficiencies, they will not revert.

“Tokenization upgrades entire business processes by digitizing assets, data, and payments onto the same infrastructure,” Raman wrote. “Assets (like stocks, bonds, real estate) and money will be able to MOVE at the speed of the Internet. This is an obvious upgrade to the financial system that should have happened decades ago; public global blockchains like Ethereum enable this today.”

The post cites examples of institutional tokenization activity on Ethereum, including money market fund initiatives from JPMorgan and Fidelity, BlackRock’s tokenized fund BUIDL, Apollo’s private credit fund ACRED (with liquidity concentrated on Ethereum and its L2s), and European participation such as Amundi tokenizing a euro-denominated money market fund. Raman also pointed to tokenized products from BNY Mellon and a planned tokenized bond fund tied to Baillie Gifford that WOULD span Ethereum and an L2 network.

Stablecoins As The “Green Light” Moment

Raman positioned stablecoins as the clearest product-market fit for onchain finance, citing “$10T+ in stablecoin transfer volumes in 2025” and claiming that “60% of all stablecoins are on Ethereum and its Layer 2 networks.” He argued that regulatory developments in the US have de-risked deployment for institutions, describing the passage of the GENIUS Act in 2025 as the moment public-chain stablecoin rails effectively received formal clearance.

As a near-term datapoint, Raman highlighted SoFi’s reported launch of a bank-issued stablecoin, SoFiUSD, on a “public, permissionless blockchain,” adding that the bank chose Ethereum. He suggested this is the start of a broader wave where investment banks, neobanks, and fintechs explore stablecoin issuance—either solo or via consortium structures—inside a single public-chain ecosystem to maximize network effects.

A major part of Raman’s thesis hinges on the idea that institutions will not converge on a single chain, but will converge on a single interconnected network, Ethereum plus its Layer 2 ecosystem. He argued that L2s provide customization by jurisdiction and customer base while inheriting Ethereum’s security and liquidity, and he described L2 economics as unusually attractive for operators, citing “90+% profit margins” as a reason businesses will want their own chains.

Raman listed examples including Coinbase’s Base, Robinhood’s plans for an Ethereum L2 featuring tokenized stocks and other assets, SWIFT’s use of the Ethereum L2 Linea for settlements, JPMorgan deploying tokenized deposits on Base, and Deutsche Bank building a public, permissioned network as an Ethereum L2.

Raman also argued ETH is emerging as an institutional treasury asset alongside bitcoin, describing BTC as “digital gold” and ETH as “digital oil”, a productive store of value tied to ecosystem economic activity.

He pointed to four public-company “MicroStrategy-equivalents” accumulating ETH: BitMine Immersion (BMNR), Sharplink Gaming (SBET), The Ether Machine (ETHM), and Bit Digital (BTBT) and claimed they have collectively purchased roughly 4.5% of ETH supply in the last six months, comparing that to MicroStrategy’s 3.2% of BTC ownership.

Those dynamics underpin his 2026 “5x” forecast set: tokenized assets rising to nearly $100 billion (from an estimated $18 billion after growing from ~$6 billion in 2025, with “66%…on Ethereum and its L2s”), stablecoin market cap expanding to $1.5 trillion (from $308 billion), and ETH appreciating 5x to $15,000—an implied $2 trillion market cap in his framing.

At press time, ETH traded at $3,227.