BlackRock CEO extols the value of Ethereum ETF

After the Bitcoin spot ETF proposal was approved, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink continued to make comments praising the value of having an Ethereum spot ETF.

BlackRock CEO extols the value of Ethereum ETF
In an interview with CNBC that took place on January 12, 2024, CEO Larry Fink of BlackRock - Wall Street's leading financial giant - said the company sees high value in establishing an Ethereum ETF. , and believes that these are just stepping stones towards tokenization - the process of digitizing real world assets (Real World Asset) - to eliminate problems related to money laundering or corruption.

Larry Fink also stated that he does not consider cryptocurrency a currency but an asset class, specifically referring to Bitcoin as "an asset class that protects you" against geopolitical risk concerns.

"It's no different than what gold has represented for thousands of years. Unlike gold, we're almost at a ceiling on the amount of Bitcoin that can be created."

Notably, the statement of the head of BlackRock took place just 1 day after the US Securities Commission (SEC) officially approved all 11 Bitcoin spot ETF proposals of Wall Street giants including BlackRock, marking the historical event with the expectation that it can bring traditional finance money flowing into the cryptocurrency industry.

In November 2023, BlackRock also filed an application to establish an Ethereum spot ETF called "iShares Ethereum Trust" according to the S-1 filing. Other Wall Street giants VanEck, ARK Invest, Grayscale, Hashdex, Invesco, Fidelity also took the opportunity of the SEC approving the Bitcoin spot ETF to open an Ethereum spot ETF proposal, causing the market to flock to Ethereum (ETH) and "pillar" tokens in this ecosystem.


BlackRock is one of the world's leading asset management companies, so their moves affect the financial and cryptocurrency markets. CEO Fink also spoke well about Bitcoin after announcing the proposal to establish an ETF for this currency in June 2023, so BlackRock's comments can be seen as an expected stepping stone for the SEC's approval of the ETF. Ethereum spot in the future, especially when the securities commission approved the Ethereum futures ETF series in early October 2023.

Immediately after the news, ETH price reacted positively, increasing slightly more than 2% from $2,618 to $2,667. In the last 7 days, it has increased by 18% as investors shifted their expectations for an ETF to the world's second largest cryptocurrency, sometimes reaching 2,689 USD - the highest since the collapse of LUNA - UST in early May 2022. . The growth of ETH also brought with it many leading tokens in the Ethereum ecosystem.
Ethereum developers have just successfully deployed the Dencun upgrade on the Goerli testnet, paving the way to prepare for deployment on the mainnet at the end of February.
Ethereum successfully deployed Dencun upgrade on Goerli testnet

As Coin68 reported, Dencun is one of the most important upgrades in the cryptocurrency industry in 2024.

However, the implementation of Dencun was not so smooth as Ethereum developers repeatedly tested the upgrade unsuccessfully. As a result, we were forced to not be able to follow the roadmap of launching in 2023 and had to push the schedule back to the end of February 2024.

Fortunately, the "appointment" to go to the Goerli testnet on January 17 was followed by the developers on time.

Tim Beiko, head of the protocol support team at the Ethereum Foundation, has just confirmed that Dencun has been successfully deployed on the Goerli testnet, at 01:32 PM on January 17, 2024 (Vietnam time).

Dencun is the name combining Deneb and Cancun. The upgrade brings major changes to Ethereum such as: cutting transaction data storage costs; improved cross-chain design and staking pools; Updated some minor changes in EVM; change data storage structure in blocks; and remove the code that allows canceling smart contracts.

Because it is the most important update, it is necessary to deploy it to testnet networks to check whether any problems arise or not. After Goerli, Dencun will be deployed to the Sepolia and Holesky testnets. If all is successful, it can be applied to the Ethereum mainnet.
And another notable information is that the Goerli testnet will stop working after the Dencun upgrade.
Ethereum developers have begun planning the next major upgrade to Dencun, called Pectra.
During a regular meeting on January 5, Ethereum (ETH) developers finalized the timeline for upgrading Dencun to testnet, as well as mentioned the changes that will be present in the next upgrade called Pectra.

As explained by Coin68, Ethereum is in the final preparations to deploy Dencun, an important upgrade of the world's second largest cryptocurrency network. The most notable adjustment in Dencun will be EIP-4844, which is designed to reduce transaction fees for layer-2, thereby further increasing scalability for Ethereum.
However, the preparation process for Dencun encountered many difficulties, causing this upgrade to be delayed for implementation in 2023. The Ethereum development team decided to postpone the hard fork to around February or March. , if testing activities on testnet do not create new problems.
The latest meeting confirmed the expected timeline for testing Dencun on Goerli, Sepolia and Holesky testnets will be on January 17, January 31 and February 7, respectively.

Next, Ethereum developers moved on to discuss Ethereum's next post-Dencun upgrade. This upgrade is called Prague/Electra, or Pectra for short - similar to how Cancun/Deneb is called Dencun for short.
Currently, the Ethereum team is still debating the content of Pectra, with two opinions: Pectra should focus on launching the Verkle Tree feature alone; or that Pectra will continue to deploy EIPs to improve Ethereum.

Verkle Tree is a new type of data structure, more complex than the Merkle Tree used by many blockchains. Verkle Tree promises to help process more data but consume less memory, thereby increasing the scale of Ethereum.

Verkle Tree itself is also mentioned prominently in the Ethereum development roadmap recently shared by founder Vitalik Buterin, belonging to The Verge period.

However, some developers believe that prioritizing Pectra for Verkle Tree is too risky, because the technical complexity of this structure can make the development process last up to 18 months or more. There are opinions that the scale and amount of work that needs to be done with Verkle Tree can be comparable or even heavier than The Merge - an upgrade to merge the two Proof of Work and Proof of Stake mechanisms of Ethereum back then. September 2022 and takes up to 2 years to prepare.
Regarding the second approach for Pectra to continue updating proposed improvements to Ethereum, the developers have listed a number of changes that may be included in the upcoming upgrade, notably:

EVM Object Format (EOF) suite - including 5 proposals EIP-3540, EIP-3670, EIP-4200, EIP-4750 and EIP-5450 - to help upgrade the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM);
EIP-7002: adjust ETH staking withdrawal mechanism for validators;
EIP-7549: reduced consensus conditions for blockchain data validation.
Ethereum developers will continue to discuss the content of the Pectra upgrade in future meetings. Pectra currently does not have an estimated implementation time frame.