DATs, ETH, and crypto market structure ETH is going to multi trillion. But not tomorrow, and not by Christmas, and that's OK. Because we're here to win big, not quickly. DATs are big buyers of ETH and believers in ethereum and ETH. That's the headline and it's bullish af. Yet imo it's even more bullish under the surface, even though a near-term significant downside case exists and might materialize. Let me preface this by saying I'm not a DAT expert, equities expert, or a Saylor-style financial engineering expert. I'm an ethereum guy. To address the near term first, concerns over tier-1 DAT management of <1x mNAV are greatly overblown. Should a crypto downturn occur (secularly or as a consequence of macro, geopolitics, etc.), this likely (mechanically) causes a crash in the share price of the DATs, leading to the market cap being less than the DAT's treasury of ETH, and a less than 1.0 mNAV. If mNAV drops low enough, there's a question as to whether or not tier-1 DATs may dump ETH during the crash or over the ensuring bear period of unknowable duration. In my mind, the odds of a tier-1 DAT dumping during a bear period are near ~zero. It's already known that (good) DATs are not cycle-driven forced sellers due to their responsible structuring of debt to be shielded from spot price liquidation. So what we're talking about here is the risk of DAT management voluntarily selling of DAT ETH reserves. It's called the "Strategic" Ethereum Reserve for a reason. These leaders are playing long term games with long term people. They're worried about stuff like-- is Ethereum on track for a hyperdominant market share in the new global economic system? And, how can we attract tens-to-hundreds of billions in net new ETH inflows and onchain customers on L1+L2? Galois recent wrote about the prisoner's dilemma of DATs to dump in a <1.0 mNAV environment; I think this is mistaken, at least for tier-1 DATs the dominate the SER pareto distribution. The real prisoner's non-dilemma here is to not be the first a#%hole DAT leader that defects during a bear and destroys their reputation over a temporary cycle circumstance. Especially given that, regardless of market conditions/macro/geopolitics/and even the midterms, ETH is now firmly on track to multi trillion and Ethereum to global ubiquity. The practical near-term risk for DATs and ETH holders in my mind is that because we've risen so far so quickly, Bitcoin included, it's imo possible that upwards reflexivity has played a major role in current price levels, as opposed to the kind of steady calm increase in confidence we want to see as ETH becomes part of the bedrock of the new world order. True change takes time. The world wrote off ETH only five months ago, with a low of $1470 on April 8. What's more likely: that ETH hit $5k because the world realized it was totally mistaken about ongoing growing levels of ethereum dominance and structural importance to the global economy... or that there's a lot of people out there that look for crypto updrafts to beat market returns and hence joined the party wave of DAT flows. Recall that while +$1 in inflows can cause up to a ~+$20 increase in market cap (see studies on this wild ratio, even in tradfi has seen 1:~7 iirc), one of the biggest secondary effects of visible inflows is simply to increase the aggregate confidence in ETH holders and would-be ETH buyers. If flows were all that mattered then shitters wouldn't be shitters. Not all increases in "spot confidence" are created equally. I'll die on the hill that confidence from flows is of a lesser "quality" or knowable stickiness than confidence from the growing common knowledge that eth is eating the economic world. The near-term risk for DATs (and our bags) is that while it's literally different this time in terms of favorable regulation/market acceptance/hypergrowing adoption/tech maturation, it's probably not different this time in terms of overall crypto volatility and low likelihood of Mostly Up Only. If a serious crash does happen, mNAVs (and our bags) could go, as usual, arbitrarily low as "spot confidence" works its way through the crisis. Again, a crash could happen not just secularly in crypto, ethereum, or btc, but and/or due to one or more of: tradfi P/E multiples being high, Trump's health, war, tariffs, t-bill market weakness, etc. This is an objectively risky time for the world, accompanied by objectively high trad valuations. NVDA was at a ~56 P/E recently and now ~48.5. That's essentially a lifetime to earn back today's valuation based on today's historically high revenues during a historic AI capex gold rush. Do the "math". "The combination of precise formulas with highly imprecise assumptions can be used to establish, or rather to justify, practically any value one wishes, however high. The more important the good will or future earning-power factor the more uncertain becomes the true value of the enterprise." - Benjamin Graham, ~1949 Believe it or not, Graham was not referring to REV maxis but rather things like NVDA at 48.5 P/E during a capex boom. Here's a saying that was popular on Wall St in 1929, months before the Black Thursday crash: "Discounting not only the future, but the hereafter." I'm not saying a crash is coming-- I'm saying we shouldn't base our view of the health of DATs or our bags on the absence of a crash. This is true in general and triply true given the preponderance of risky/pumpy factors in the overall markets this season. The issue with tier-1 ETH DATs isn't them being forced or voluntary sellers of the underlying. It's the potential undermining of their credibility and thus capability to operate optimally if ETH goes way down after they've' bought so much so fast. Some of it at historically high price levels. In some cases, DAT leaders have vociferously argued for ETH to go to multi trillion over what sounded to me like the short-to-medium term, as opposed to imo not just a realistic but healthier outlook of medium-to-long term. Somebody said to me last month, paraphrasing, "better to pump to 25k and crash to 10k than grow slowly to 10k". I love you man but I strongly disagree, even if DATs are farming volatility. We don't want our newest pluckiest friends to be badly underwater. If you are earlier, you should make more money. Words for us to live by and discourage volatility. Part of our job as the community may end up being to support DATs and their leadership should a crash occur. Because DATs are amazing for us: 1. DATs buy ETH, hold it for long periods, and recruit new/deeper segments of investors, especially institutional. We like the bid. 2. DATs are de facto political parties for Ethereum. There will come a time when Tom Lee has a strong view on hard fork design. And when two major DATs disagree on hard fork design or other critical network parameters, like the gas limit (only key parameter that uses ETH token-weighted voting). This is extremely healthy political diversity for Ethereum. You can buy a DAT's equity just because you like their politics/views. I sure will (when they're onchain). Ethereum is a living/political/public institution long before it's a protocol or set of software deployments. 3. DATs are app layer BD orgs for Ethereum. The conversations to get somebody to buy $100M in ETH can be remarkably similar in some dimensions to the conversations to get institutions to launch L2s, L1 apps, or L1 tokenized assets-- overlapping audience, credibility/trust, vision, expertise, etc. Etherealize is a BD org, product org, and DAT ~co-founder/affiliate in one team. The synergies here are significant. DATs and SER entities are already playing a big role here in ecosystem stewardship today. This is only weeks-to-months old. Imagine years down the road. 3. Everybody knows that DATs participate in commodity ETH yields, especially staking. What may be less appreciated is the option for tier-1 DATs to do the difficult tech+BD work to realize non-commodity yields from partnerships, at-scale novel products, etc. Basically, there's this idea that tier-1 DATs should get a higher yield on average at scale because they have access to opportunities that you don't. Just like Sequoia or Goldman. It's a credible idea, albeit pretty theoretical in these early days. Lubin talks a big game about it. I trust his vision, as well as I personally have a sense that creative low hanging fruit is probably out there. Excited to see it unfold. My immediate ask for tier-1 ETH DATs is to put their stocks on the L1 with deep liquidity asap, so that their whale supporters (and growing global market of institutional actors doing business on the L1) can help stabilize the equity price during a crash, and pick up a quality asset at bargain prices. Eventually it'll go without saying that tokenized equities should have zero custody/holding/transfer fees, strong property rights in terms of tokenization legal framework, and permissionless transfer and reuse/integrations across defi on L1 and any L2. Where yield or stock splits are builtin, it should be on a natively rebasing basis because you can't make a rebasing asset from a non-rebasing but vice versa is trivial. I want to buy tokenized DATs that meet this minimum bar for a quality RWA. If a major crash comes-- from $4.5k to $2.5k or from $8k to $4.5k, nobody knows-- the mNAV situation could naturally become dire. In that case, we shouldn't expect forced or voluntary sales of the underlying ETH by tier-1 DATs. Indeed, doing so implies being non-tier-1, dump that shit. But we should expect that DAT leaders will need and deserve our support during those trying times, should they come to pass. The path to multi trillion ETH is, by analysis of human behavior, crypto dynamics, historical trends, and statistical likelihood, unlikely to be Up Only. The great news is we're crushing it and pretty darn likely to get there soon enough. ETH is going to multi trillion because Ethereum is the hub of the new global economic system, and not because of upward reflexivity and/or flows.